The Exorcist

[Warnings: religion, disturbing??, possession, miscarriage]

‿̩͙⊱༒︎༻♱༺༒︎⊰‿̩͙

“If we fear the Devil, we have already ceded too much to him. I respect the Devil. I highly respect him. I do not, however, fear him. I fear God alone.” — Father Carlos Martins, The Exorcist Files

I ascend the concrete steps to the Bishop residence, old knees creaking a protest. The bag in my hand clatters the tools inside. I reach the top of the front porch, and take a moment to remark my surroundings. I look over my shoulder, brows tugging up despite sagging skin.

Birds chirp a warm regard in the distance. The sun bestows the world warmth in this new coming of spring, yet under the cover of the Bishop porch, a chill breathes over my time-worn hands. A breeze, gentle as a lamb, carries the scent of lilac from a neighbor’s flourishing bush.

The Bishop’s bushes have long since died. Flowers wilted, petals charred to incomprehensible bits. The bushes—the same lilac bushes as the neighbors—parish through favorable conditions. Darkness crawls along the corners of the front stoop, skittering along the ground, towards the seal of the door.

Before I consider knocking, the door opens in a rush of relief.

“Father Ezra,” Andrew says in a breath of his own diminishing hope, stepping out to offer his hand. “Thank you for coming.”

Through the cold, slither of dread coiling around my spine, I smile, and accept the handshake.

“Please, dear Andrew, call me Augustus. I’m glad we’ve been able to meet on such short notice.”

“Yes, yes, absolutely.” Andrew steps back, parting the door in invitation.

Andrew doesn’t strike me as a ‘yes man’. I notice as I brush by and into his home, he towers well above my stout five foot, nine inch stature. The musculature of his body, the exposed solidity of arms and neck, are decorated in tattoos. Accompanying the permanent artwork and discipline of brawn, he sports a short crop of dark hair close to his head.

“Military?” I ask, hanging in the foyer to familiarize myself with the framed photos on the walls of the Bishop's blissful union-their wedding day. Viviana radiates beauty, from the lithe body swathed in white lace, to the long black locks fashioned into loose curls, her face full of light, her blue eyes full of life.

“Army. Discharged a few years ago. Guess they don’t so much like what happens to a man after he’s blown up one too many times.”

I pull my eyes from the pictures. Andrew isn’t referring to physical disability.

“Thank you for your service. I’ll pray for you.”

Andrew nods, and begins down the foyer, where the the entryway opens.

The bookshelf of two small oak shelves adorned with pillar candles, faux flowers, and countless hardbacks take my attention. I don’t follow. I crouch, my middle finger outstretched to graze the spines, a faint tremor from the inescapable Parkinson’s. More obscurity in the content read in this home.

It— demonic.

I do not touch.

The Demonologist— demonic.

I lower my finger.

The Book of Forbidden Knowledge— demonic.

The furrow of my brow deepens, because these are all doors.

“…Andrew, forgive me if I’m mistaken, didn’t you state your wife was Catholic, and you Baptist?”

Andrew rubs the back of his neck. “…Not much into practicing. Viv and I’ve never gone to church in our ten years together.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t think to.”

“Even after the succession of events following your wife’s miscarriage?”

Andrew cringes. I stand.

“I mean no offense in asking, Andrew. Only asking so I have the necessary details. Have you or your wife received the Eucharist in the recent past?”

“The hell’s the Eucharist?”

My smile turns wry. “The Holy Communion.”

“Oh, uh… No… No, we haven’t.”

“Your wife—” I say, walking to meet him at the end of the foyer to continue in. “She’s home, yes?”

“Yes,” Andrew says, hovering near the dining room table. “She’s… in her room.” The words muffle under the drag of Andrew’s hand down his face.

“In her room?” I place my tote atop the table with a soft clack and sigh of aged leather. “You two no longer share the space?”

“She’s… taken the nursery— er, the spare room—over. It’s this big mess of her shit, and frankly? I keep the door locked when she’s not in there. This has all… driven her to a fucked up psychosis, Father…” Andrew rakes his fingernails over his scalp repeatedly. He mutters, “Sorry for my French.”

“Yes, you spoke of her many obsessions on the phone, Andrew… When did these begin?”

“After the miscarriage.”

“Has her interest in literature always been so abhorrent?”

“Not at all.”

“When did that start?”

Andrew raises his face from his hands, a slow calculation flattening his features. “…After the miscarriage.”

I open my mouth to inquire, but the vermin taunt of scratching makes Andrew jolt.

“There it is! The noise I was talking about!” He points low to the ground, towards the darkened hallway leading to the rooms. “I’ve called an exterminator out eight times and no one can find anything!”

I tip my nose to the air, that old bulbous thing, and inhale deeply. Rot putrefies the air, coming in the form of excrement and spoiled fish.

The scratching morphs into disjointed knocks.

Knock!

Scritch, scritch.

Knock! Knock!

Scritchscritchscritchscritch.

Then—

BOOM!

A weighted thud hits the wall in a violent burst, dropping the last framed photograph.

Glass splatters. Shards fly over the tile, sharpened edges with no decency for the blood it can draw.

Andrew rushes to collect the pieces, grumbling to himself.

In a measured stroll, I walk to where Andrew kneels, his hands shaking as he cleans the break.

“And you say Viviana is not the source of the noise or the damages to your home?” Merely a whisper.

“No. She doesn’t do this. She doesn’t do anything. She sits in her weird fucking room, doing her weird fucking stuff, scaring the fucking shit out of me, and she doesn’t do a damn thing.” Andrew lifts his head, his jaw trembling under the force of anger. Wrath looking for a home brims his eyes with tears, but there’s no one he can see to blame. “She’s a shell of the woman I married. There’s no one in there. I don’t know how to do this, Father. I don’t know how to do this. She hardly eats. She barely sleeps. She won’t talk. I try to bathe her because she’s suddenly pissing and shitting herself and it’s like drowning a feral fucking cat—!” Andrew throws his arms up.

He goes quiet. The house does too. Quiet, but not empty.

I place my hand on the defeated slump of his shoulder.

“Demons are predators, Andrew,” I whisper, “They feed on the existing wounds, worming themselves into the freshest, deepest pits of human pain. Your wife, Andrew, she suffers existentially because of the loss of life. In her attempt to understand why the good Lord took from her, she turned to the wrong places. Your wife… she opened a door, and now she shares her body with a biological disease that will do anything to make it their own.”

‿̩͙⊱༒︎༻♱༺༒︎⊰‿̩͙

The door to the spare room, the once nursery, is left open a crack. Intentional, though not invitational. Darkness swells impenetrably, and though I move my eye through the slat, I see nothing.

The Devil always does his bidding in the dark.

A hum, sweetened with deception, snakes from the room and into my ears. Humming, accompanied by the rhythmic creak of a rocking chair. A slow back and forth that raises the white hair on my neck—an understanding that my presence is known, and it’s only a matter of time. A rancid hot gush of wind flogs me, carrying the smell of released bowels and burning flesh. I feel Andrew behind me, the tangibility of flesh and blood warm near my back.

I clear my throat, speaking through the attempted strangulation. “Viviana? My name is Augustus Ezra, a friend of your husband’s. May I come in?”

The hum severs as the rocking does. Silence follows, thick in a predatory assessment, making the shrill vibration in the air deafening.

“You don’t belong in here.” Viviana answers, the low growl drudging from the depths of hell to puppeteer her vocal cords. “Filthy, filthy, filthy. No one belongs in here. This is where me and my babies can talk.”

I crane my head just enough to whisper to Andrew. “Please, will you fetch my bag?”

The thump of his feet carries off.

In my pocket, I uncap an ampoule of holy water. I douse my fingertips with it, then nudge the door open with my other hand.

Light shafts in from the hallway, unfolding to a picture of parasitic infestation. Feces smears the walls. Urine soils the carpet. Small doll scalps cut from the heads litter the floor. Shelves line the walls, once meant for baby trinkets, now displaying an egregious mar of toys and obscurities.

Dolls sit without scalps, without hair, guarding Viviana like sentries of the damned. The eyes open impossibly wide and unblinking, where the eyelids have been cut off, so they can see everything. The mangled corpses of crushed birds raise their broken wings in a cry to the heavens, but all they received was sacrificial death. A locus buzzes from the room, landing on the toe of my shoe.

In the middle of it all— Viviana, her back to me in the rocking chair. Grease-matted hair clings to her head, scratch-ridden patches missing.

“Dirty fucking priest, get out of here!”

“But Viviana, how would you know I’m a priest?”

“Because you all smell like shit!” She roars, twisting around to see me with the crackle of her vertebrate like it is crumbling. The snarl of her parched lips splits, blood oozing in a vile concoction of black ichor and her humanity.

I take one step in, and underfoot— a squish.

Maggots.

Thousands of wriggling maggots fester in the decay, scavengers eating at Viviana’s trauma as the Devil does.

I continue despite the constant squelch under my shoe.

“Mrs. Bishop, you’ve survived remarkable trauma. I’m afraid something unforgiving has used it to prey on you—” I begin, placing my hand—anointed in holy water—to her shoulder.

Oh, the scream.

Viviana shoots back over the chair, the spindles of her spine knocking the wood where she bends in half— backwards. Her eyes roll into her head, the whites jaundiced, the vessels angrily bursted.

“You motherfucker!” She screams, though it’s still not her voice. It’s the cross-dimensional parasite using her flesh. “You’ll need more than a little water to get rid of me! This body is mine— she gave it to me!”

Andrew barrels in, stirring the stale air. He skids to a halt behind me, bag in hand. I take it from him without looking, each of us transfixed on the gnarled face of a demon superimposing his wife’s.

“Andrew, listen to me very carefully now. Everything I ask of you, you need to follow, without question.”

“Yeah. Yes.”

“Perfect. Now that we have an understanding, I must warn you. This will be unpleasant. It always is, in the fight for a mortal soul. Brace yourself, Andrew, and remember one thing—”

I pull the iron crucifix from my bag, the metal glinting in the pale light as a beacon of hope—of light to restore.

“—The Devil lies, and he will do anything to take your wife. Now… hold her down.”

I charge forward, and Andrew follows suit.

Viviana’s skin sears, smoldering, as I press the crucifix to it.

Andrew wrangles her flailing arms with a grunt, taking elbows to the face, and knees to her stomach.

The demon howls in his agony, but this is nothing compared to what he suffers without possession.

With Viviana trapped in the vise of Andrew’s grasp, I exchange the crucifix for a the vial of blessed salt. The screaming subsides to ragged, animalistic pants, mouth open— that’s my way in. I pour a pile of the blessed salt over her tongue. She spits, blowing a puff of it out, but alas, salt cannot be fully removed. It’s absorbing right onto her tongue, with no choice but to swallow, to consume the sanctified salt.

Weakening, the demon writhes to a slouch. There’s no time to waste.

“In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, I command you demon to depart this vessel and come before the divine authority of God once again, so He can cast you back to Hell!” I bellow, jowls shaking in the resonance of my voice. I smear the Oil of Catechumens in a cross over Viviana’s forehead and temples, her teeth snapping for me. “Through the power vested in me, that be the power of Jesus Christ, I command you demon— Leave!”

A litany of misery tears from Viviana’s throat, the savagery of the demon’s cry giving way to the horrified pain of a woman, of Viviana.

Andrew draws back for comfort, shushing her. “Baby? Baby— Oh, Viv, come on, hang in there—!”

“HE’S HURTING ME!” She shrieks, and blood gushes from her nostrils like a valve’s been switched.

Andrew snaps his eyes at me as a threat, and I repeat, “Andrew, the Devil lies. The demon hurts. Viviana hurts because the demon is trying to pull her down with it! Hold on to her, and don’t you dare let go!”

Andrew cinches back down as his wife thrashes and wails against him.

“Viviana, I know you’re in there,” I say, marking the cross in oil at the back of her neck. “You must revoke this demon’s rights to your body! Through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, renounce your agreement to this demon!”

“I’ll rip her fucking body to shreds!” The demon vows.

“Viviana, repeat after me— I renounce this demon, and the promises he’s given me—!”

“I- I- I—” frustrated groans crescendo to a scream that rattles the walls.

“Andrew,” I order, “talk to her! Call her back. Call her home. Call her to you, to us, to Jesus.”

Andrew spews his beckoning, “Viv, baby, c’mon. You’re in there. I know you’re in there. Come back to me. Listen to me, answer for me. We can fix this. We can fix all of this! This isn’t over. You and me? We have a lifetime. Don’t make me do this alone— I need you.”

“Viviana, repeat after me,” I call to her, to her lingering, fighting, beautiful humanity. “I renounce this demon and the promises he’s made me. I renounce his power and his space within my body!”

“Shut the fuck up, you ignorant sack of shit!”

“Demon, I command you— silence! Viviana, speak. Fight against this. Speak your renunciation and free yourself.”

Viviana takes on the angelic face of my daughter—a manifestation of the demon’s cunning tactics—frozen at the age of nine, where I never let her see double digits. “Daddy?” She cries, tears down her gaunt cheeks. “Daddy, don’t do this to me! Not again! It’s so cold out there.”

The sight, her face only in my memories and pictures, it swells my heart and shrinks my chest, but my devotion does not waver.

It uses her against me. Never again.

A pendant of Saint Michael threads my fingers, and I clutch the crucifix once more. I press my hand to Viviana’s head, the metal of the pendant causing a seizure under my palm. With the crucifix raised, I fight. I fight for this soul, for Viviana, and the life she has yet to live.

“By the power of Jesus Christ, whose authority I reign over you, demon! I rebuke, repudiate, bind, and cast out all evil spirits. I command all of you, in the Name of Jesus, to depart right now from Viviana, and go immediately and directly to the foot of the cross of Jesus and never return! Renounce him, Viviana! NOW!”

The shelves split in half, wood fracturing across the air. Splinters pin into my face, gaining a hiss from me as the blood trickles in small rivulets down my cheeks. The dolls clatter to the ground. The maggots wriggle near combustion. The birds thud the ground and convulse.

“Yes, Viviana! Speak, my dear child of God! God wants you to speak, so He can set you free! Speak!”

In a crackle holler of deliverance, Viviana salvages her power enough to yell to the heavens— “I RENOUNCE YOU DEMON AND THE PROMISES YOU’VE MADE. I RENOUNCE YOUR POWER AND SPACE WITHIN MY BODY!”

In a piercing cry of a woman mourning, finding her power, Viviana erupts— “GET-OUT-OF-ME—!”

Birthing hurts. As does liberation.

Clutching her husband, the chair, anything she can hook her limbs around, Viviana pushes the demon from her body, rejecting its authority.

The screams diminish to quaking tears. The air clears of its corruption.

Old body and old heart aching in the safety of freedom, I smooth my hand over Viviana’s head, and step back. Sunlight peeks into the room, the song of birds closer. I stagger to the window, and haul it open. Fresh lilac fills the space.

As Andrew and his bride sob, relishing in their victory over the Devil, I leave. I go home to nothing— to everything, to no one— to Jesus, and I will remain the Light in the Dark.

I think of my daughter, and the day at the lake. I think of how the boat motor turned the water red—not water to wine, but water to death, because I hadn’t seen her slip off the back. I understand it was all part of God’s plan.

I will remain the hand of redemption in the shadows, ever reaching to you, as long as you’ll take it. I will remain a great adversary of evil, a teacher to the sinners, and a shepherd to the Lord’s sheep.

I am, and will remain—

The Exorcist.