The Exorcism

The Exorcism

Muscles bulged in the old woman’s forearms as she twisted and squirmed against us. Her strength was incredible. When she managed to free an arm or leg from our grasp, she savagely punched a man's face or kicked his ribs. Yet her eyes were the most terrifying thing of all – transformed into solid black orbs seething with demonic rage.

“Don’t look into her eyes!” I shouted. “No matter what – avoid her eyes!”

The four men trying to restrain her cried out and shouted to one another, their faces red with exertion. One recited the Lord’s Prayer in a tremulous voice as tears streamed down his face.

When we finally gained the upper hand, the demon howled in a chilling disharmony of several male voices, followed by lifelike mimicries of our deceased loved ones – curses against us and God, and demoralizing derisions aimed at a former husband, father, son.

With her secured to the table, I lunged for my bag and grabbed the Pelagias Cross – a sacred relic on loan from St. Mary’s Church in Kembleford. I held it horizontally above her chest, crucifix down. She lurched violently, and blood spattered from her mouth, most probably from a deeply bitten tongue. She pinched her eyes shut while howling and cursing vilely.

“May the Power of Christ compel you!” I commanded, and pressed the cross to the demoniac’s chest while pouring several cups of holy water upon her.

The woman began to lurch and shake in a kind of spiritual seizure, so I left the cross on her chest and helped the other men hold her down. Seconds later, her body arched upward, and a flash of greenish light erupted from her chest. It ascended rapidly toward the ceiling and evaporated.

It was done. She was free. And, most importantly, we were all still alive...

After exorcising someone, I typically undergo a period of spiritual healing and restrengthening, but no such luck this time around. Two days later, I’d already gotten the call to deal with a home possession while still enduring night terrors from the previous ritual. But the owners were major patrons of the diocese, so it was a rush job. Fortunately, house exorcisms are easy stuff compared to human possessions, so I wasn’t concerned.

Because a demon can hop willy-nilly to any corner, closet, or rafter in a house, residential exorcisms require a second person's help, so the bishop had ecumenically deputized Dimitri as my assistant. Between the two of us, we’d hopefully cast this demon back into Hell by nightfall. When I say Hell, here, I mean the literal Hell. Real Hell. Think Dante’s Inferno…

But when Brother Dimitri and I pulled up to the Claddagh residence on Hunterwasser Street, I already sensed a palpable malevolence. It coursed through my body with an electrical tingle, and every hair on my body stood on end. The cold, dismal sky added to my foreboding.

Fog was creeping through the streets as we got out of the car and gathered our implements of exorcism. At last we turned to face the stately manor house – built of brown sandstone and framed by twin turret towers. The Claddaghs had fled to a nearby Airbnb two days ago, and they were avoiding the place like the plague until we could purge it of the demonic presence.

I’d met with the family privately at their Airbnb to learn the details of the possession. This was essential to planning the ritual. After hearing them out I described this demon as a kind of “super-poltergeist on steroids”. Poltergeists typically drop the occasional book to the floor or rearrange the cutlery, but this demon was unleashing true hell on the household. It had chased Mister Claddagh around the house with a “possessed vacuum cleaner” and flung kitchen knives at his wife. Fortunately, she was great at aikido and managed to escape with her life. The two children, both in their early teens, had almost eaten poisoned food. On Claddagh’s laptop, I reviewed some webcam footage from their kitchen, and it clearly showed the levitation and movement of a box of rat poison as the demon poured some into a bowl of rice pudding on the kitchen counter.

When I explained that we’d be sprinkling holy water about, as well as burning incense, Claddagh accessed the home’s control systems from an app on his cell phone and turned off the smoke alarm. He warned me, however, that the heat sensors on the house-wide sprinklers could not be switched off, so we had to avoid placing a candle or other heat source too close to any of the hundreds of sprinkler heads anchored to ceilings throughout every corner of the house, including closets, cabinet interiors, the attic, even the basement.

Now, as we approached the front door, I bade Dimitri to pause. I recited the Exorcist’s Creed, followed by a blessing with holy water. Though we were still outside the home, the interior lights began to flash off and on, wildly and at random, then went dark. As Dimitri reached for the door to punch in the security code that Claddagh had supplied, a garden hose lifted from a garden bed and blasted us with a well-aimed stream of water.

Dimitri finally wrenched the door open, and we scurried inside. We’d advanced only three steps into the foyer when the massive manor door slammed behind us with a thunderclap.

“Holy shit!” Dimitri exclaimed as we both jumped. Then he shot me a guilty glance at his use of language. My heart was already sinking – this wasn’t going to be easy. This demon meant business.

Despite the home’s elegant, old-school furnishings, the place was a wreck. Lewd pictures were scrawled across the walls in black, red, and blue crayon. The 216 inch flat panel TV displayed a hellish vision of hundreds of priests dangling from nooses in a fierce, fiery wind.

“How can it do that?” Dimitri said, his eyes wide and trembling. “That’s a digital TV, right? How can a demon create a digital data stream, ex nihilo? That video’s being displayed in full 8K!”

Then the lights resumed their frenzied, stroboscopic flashings, and I became nauseous. The doorbell began ringing at several times per second, and the furnace turned on. The temperature in here was already in the 80’s and climbing higher by the minute. We moved cautiously forward, Dimitri a step or two behind me, and I opened my small leather-bound copy of the Official Rite of Exorcism.

Then, from nowhere, a disembodied, guttural male voice shouted something, and, as I tried to make sense of the words, I realized it had spoken in Latin. This demon was mocking us, using the Church’s own language against us. All at once, as if on the demon’s command, a closet door banged open, and a large Danley vacuum cleaner, its front light glowing menacingly red, roared out and headed straight for us. We jumped out of its way, whereupon it wheeled around and followed Brother Dimitri at a brisk pace.

“Jump up on a chair!” I shouted. Dimitri had reached a huge chesterfield leather recliner. He leapt up and stood on it just as the vacuum rolled by. This must have been the top-of-the-line Danley model, given its size and powerful self-propelled motor drive.

Seconds later, I heard another burst of guttural Latin speech. This time, I’d been listening for it, and I repeated it back to myself:

"Alexa, musicam vulgarem pleno volumine audi!"

I translated it quickly as “Alexa, play obscene music at full volume!” Suddenly, the entire house was filled with the deafening screech of a punk music band “singing” about three men and two women cavorting on a church altar. I glanced about the room and saw that the music was blaring from numerous in-wall-mounted speakers.

“Brother Dimitri!” I shouted, hoping he would hear me in all the commotion. “Can you see an Alexa speaker anywhere?”

Dimitri, still standing on the chair, spun around, and at last he pointed to a coffee table at the center of the drawing room. There it was – I could see an Alexa at table center, its small blue light glowing. Vacuum cleaner be damned, I charged toward it and barely missed being kneecapped as the Danley passed with an ominous roar. I grabbed the Alexa and shouted into it.

"Alexa, ad Anglicam linguam muta!"

Despite the awful din, I heard Alexa’s reply.

“I am now accepting instructions in English, not Latin.”

Now was my chance, however brief.

“Alexa, shut off all music, and turn on all the lights and leave them on. Cease controlling all appliances and other electronics, and turn yourself off!”

In less than a second, the room fell silent, the huge TV turned off, the flashing lights and ringing doorbell ceased, and the Danley coasted silently to a stop. The blue LED on the Alexa unit winked out, so I threw it to the floor and smashed it to bits beneath one leg of the heavy oak coffee table. Dimitri rejoined my side, both of us breathing hard in the now quiet room.

“Wow, that was quick thinking, Father! Great work! Listen, have you ever known a demon to have such digital acumen? I didn’t realize they knew how to manipulate and control this high-tech stuff.”

I shook my head in disbelief and mopped the sweat from my forehead. Despite this favorable turn of events, I knew the battle was far from won, for as I re-opened the exorcism rite and invoked the power of Christ, the air around us became as cold as ice, our breaths condensing as vapor before our eyes – a sure sign of a nearby ghostly or demonic entity.

“Brother, quickly – activate the electric censer and carry it about the room, to evenly disperse holy smoke!”

As he rushed to execute my orders, I continued invoking the name and power of Christ, while I reached into my bag and extracted my favorite aspergillum, along with a quart of holy water. I soaked the aspergillum in the water and began to fling droplets about the room as I marched forward and continued my invocations. Meanwhile, Dimitri had switched on the censer, and dense clouds of holy smoke were now streaming from the fan-driven vents on its sides.

“Demon, Christ gives you no quarter, no refuge! You must leave this house and everyone within it in peace! By His power, I cast you back into the realm of fire, to the pool of burning brimstone from which you shall never escape!”

Several phones around the house began to ring, and I picked up a handset beside me. Over the speaker, I heard the deep, mocking laughter of the demon, so I placed the handpiece onto an end table, not in the phone's cradle, to prevent it from ringing again.

“Ow!” Dimitri yelped. I looked to him as he rubbed the side of his head. A hardbound book lay on the floor beside him. Then something struck me, as well, and I saw two softback novels drop at my feet. I looked about frantically and soon located an enormous set of tall built-in bookshelves along one wall of the drawing room.

Suddenly, hundreds of books, ranging from softback novels to large hardbound tomes, flew like missiles from the shelves. I shouted for Dimitri to duck, and we were soon being knocked about as the books slammed into us, over and ever.

Though I had destroyed the Alexa unit, a chorus of moans and whispers began to pour from the audio speakers around the house. This struck renewed fear into me – were we dealing with a single demon, or many? Brother Dimitri sustained a head shot from Volume 2 of a Funk and Wagnall encyclopedia set, and he staggered to one side. He was sweating, his face filled with terror. When a large butcher knife went whistling past his face, he turned to me, his jaw quivering.

“This isn’t what I signed up for! I’m sorry, Father!”

With that, he leaped up on the sofa and dove headlong through an immense mullioned window. Young and fit as he was, he recovered himself quickly in the yard, as he stood up and fled the scene on foot.

“Get out!” the demon jeered. “Get out, all of you! This is my domain!”

Meanwhile, more and more knives were taking flight, along with small kitchen appliances like blenders, toasters, and even a large KitchenAid mixer. I located the basement door, opened it, and slammed it behind me. Seconds later, a fusillade of knives speared into the door, the tips of their blades penetrating an inch or two through the wood planking. I crossed myself, raised my eyes to heaven, and thanked God I was still alive.

Only one path remained. I hurried down the stairs and looked about. I was at my wit’s end, having never witnessed a home possession so severe. This demon was pure evil – perhaps Satan himself was here. As I shouted the Lord’s Prayer, I ran to and fro, searching for anything I might use to tip the balance in my favor. Then I saw it – a huge blue metal tank, labeled “Sprinkler Water Reservoir” - and an idea came to me, perhaps on Divine Inspiration.

As I drew up beside the tank, a small tool chest took flight from a workbench and nearly slammed into my ribs. I placed my hands upon the cool metal surface, and, amid the roar and din around me, I blessed all the water in the tank. I now had hundreds, maybe a thousand gallons of holy water at my disposal.

I fumbled through my pockets and finally found my lighter. For once, I was glad I hadn’t yet managed to quit smoking. Just two feet above, one of the heat-sensing sprinkler heads jutted from the ceiling. I flicked the lighter and held the wavering flame up to the sensor.

A warning siren sprang to life – deafeningly loud – and holy water began to spray from all the sprinkler heads in the basement. I stood there, relishing the intense water pressure from above, as all the flying objects around me crashed to the floor and skidded to a stop. The house quaked about me. The demon howled in agony as every square inch of the home was suffused with holiness.

And then, at long last, with my proverbial back against the wall, the demon was gone...

“Thanks be to God!” I shouted, and I fell to my knees, my body trembling. Soon, I regathered myself and stood. As the sprinkler system continued, I climbed the stairs and stepped back onto the main floor. Here, water sprayed in all directions, soaking everything in sight. All I heard was the fire warning siren and the pressurized water. I emerged from the house and stood on the front lawn while sirens wailed in the distance. Firetrucks were approaching, summoned by the home’s fire suppression system.

I was battered and bruised but knew that the last thing I needed was questioning by police and firemen, so I hurried to my car and fled the scene. I drove several blocks, parked beside the curb, and texted Mister Claddagh. My cold, trembling fingers hit all the wrong buttons, so it took me several minutes to send a summarizing message.

“The demon is gone. The sprinkler system is on, but there is no fire. My work here is finished. Sorry for all the damage!”

I set down my phone and thanked God for seeing me through the most traumatic home exorcism of my career. A few minutes later, I drove off toward the St. Matthias rectory.

Halfway through my drive, I was finally calming down when the transmission on my electric smart car shifted spontaneously into reverse. The car screeched to a halt, and I looked about in consternation. Then the car’s audio system crackled to life, and a familiar, guttural voice spoke loudly. In Latin...