Hell

by Tom Lewis

  The priest then pricked his finger with the knife and squeezed it until several drops of blood dripped into the chalice. He then dipped his finger into the chalice and used the lamb’s blood, mixed with his own, to trace symbols across the girl’s bare breasts and abdomen.

  When he was finished, he proceeded over to the girl’s legs and spread them open. He pulled aside his vestments, revealing his naked body beneath it, and thrust himself into her.

  A murmured chant arose among the congregants, and with each thrust of the priest’s pelvis, the same Latin phrase was repeated over and over. Cassie listened to the words but was only able to pick out a few. The ones she caught were “Ave” and “Satana.” This continued, with the chants repeated in rhythmic timing to the copulation, until the priest and the girl reached their climax. Then a hush fell over the congregation.

  The priest took the chalice and pressed it between the girl’s legs, allowing her vaginal excretions to drain into it. He then resumed his position behind the altar and placed the chalice on the girl’s abdomen.

  One of the congregants carried to the altar a gold plate with a round white wafer of bread on it. Cassie recognized this as a Communion Host from the Catholic Mass. It was something she had been taught was the manifestation of Christ’s Body, under the appearance of bread.

  This was wrong. Even though she no longer held to her Catholic beliefs, there was something insidious in profaning that wafer. And as she watched the priest dip the Host into the chalice, that silent alarm sounded again in her mind. It was only with difficulty that she was able to silence it this time.

  The priest raised the desecrated Host above his head in a mock benediction, and the congregation murmured a response in Latin. Cassie was only able to pick out two words. “Versus Christus.”

  The priest lowered the desecrated Host and ate it. A congregant joined the priest at the altar, and the priest handed him the chalice. The congregant sipped from the chalice, then walked over to the front row of the congregation and handed the chalice to the person on the far right. That man sipped from it, then handed it to the congregant beside him.

  As Cassie watched the chalice being passed from one congregant to the next, that alarm sounded for the fourth and final time, and a queasy feeling settled in her stomach. She felt that she was being asked to consent to something but was unclear what it was. When she made a feeble effort to resist it, it came back more forcefully.

  The chalice finally made its way to her, and she now had to make a choice. She could give in to whatever consent was being demanded of her, or she could refuse...

  And everybody would know.

  She looked around at all those hooded figures. They had to know she was hesitating.

  But why was she hesitating? She didn’t have an answer for that.

  Only secret. Not threat, her thoughts reminded her.

  And with her eyes closed, she raised the chalice to her lips and consented to that demand.

  The contents of the chalice were gruesome and bitter, and she forced herself to keep from gagging as it entered her mouth, and seeped down her throat.

  From that moment on, her memories of the night were hazy, and her only clear memory was of a sudden onslaught of voices that whispered in her mind.

  You belong...

  Serve him...

  All hail... his...

  You belong...

  His...

  All hail... his... Satana...

  Hail... Satana...

  ****

  It was early morning by the time Cassie crawled in through her bedroom window and crashed down on her bed. She felt sick to the point of nausea in every way possible — physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It had been a mistake. The whole night had been a mistake. She had consented to something that the deepest, most honest part of her knew was abject evil, and there would be dire consequences to pay.

  She leaned over the edge of her bed and vomited across the floor.

  What she didn’t know at the time, and wouldn’t fully realize until she lay dying several months later, was the enormity of the terrifying and pervasive forces she allowed entry into herself that night.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The "Other"

  Cassie awoke the morning after the Black Mass with a fever. She didn’t go out at all that day, or the next day, which was Sunday, and it wasn’t until Monday that she finally pried herself from her bedroom.

  By then, the deep changes within her had already begun.

  As she rode the bus to school that day, she noticed a change in the way things appeared. It was subtle, but appreciable, and the best way she could describe it was that things had lost their vibrancy. Where only days before there had been life and vibrancy in the world around her, things now appeared as if seen through a hazy net. Objects still appeared in detail, but they were dull and lifeless, like ashen drawings in a book. And maybe that was the best way she could describe it — things felt dead.

  This change came to her hearing as well. As she roamed the hallways at school, sounds came across as flat, with no distinction in their tone or timbre. The sound of a bird or automobile carried no difference in its qualities from spoken words, and music came across as merely a series of beats, without the emotional effect a pleasant melody had once carried.

  The world had lost its flavors, is how she would later characterize it.

  And then there was the déjà vu.

  Over the coming weeks, Cassie experienced increasingly frequent occurrences of déjà vu. It might be something as simple as a face she saw in a crowd, or the fearful look in a dog’s eye as it cowered from her path, or even the way the sun gleamed from a storefront window, and she could expect to have several such occurrences each day. And the effect was unnerving.

  But the most significant of the changes — and the actual cause of them — was something Cassie called the “Other.” Beginning less than a week after the Black Mass, Cassie became aware of the constant presence of something with her. It was like having a second half to herself that could freely invade her mind and intrude on her thoughts; it left her sickened with the realization that her deepest, most personal thoughts had been fingered by a terrible filth.

  And equally alarming was that it was planting its own thoughts in her mind.

  “I’m feeling something in my head,” she told her goth friends as they shared a joint in the cemetery one night. “Are you guys feeling anything?”

  The others exchanged looks and shook their heads.

  “No. Not really,” Trish said. “What are you feeling?”

  “It’s like I keep having these thoughts, but they’re not mine. Something’s putting them there.”

  “What kind of thoughts?” Silvia asked.

  Cassie shook her head. “Really messed-up ones. Like angry and disturbing, and really, really dark.”

  “I thought you liked dark,” Seth said.

  “Not like these.”

  Trish seemed to get it. “I think it’s your Other. Do you feel it around you too?”

  “Yeah. Like all the time. What does it want?”

  “To show you things?”

  Silvia nodded. “It’s there to help you learn.”

  “Well, it’s not,” Cassie said. “And it’s scaring the hell out of me. How do I get rid of it?”

  Silvia and Trish looked at each, then back at Cassie. Trish shook her head. “You can’t. You already invited it in.”

  “I didn’t invite anything in.”

  “Yeah. You did. We all did.”

  “Then why don’t you guys have it too?”

  Trish shrugged. “Because it chose you.”

  “Why do you want to get rid of it?” Silvia asked.

  “Because it’s always there,” Cassie said. “And its thoughts scare me.”

  “Maybe it’s trying to enlighten you,” Silvia offered.

  “I don’t care. I want it out.”

  As the weeks went by, these intrusions by the Other became even more frequent
and pervasive. There were times when Cassie could no longer discern where her thoughts ended and this Other’s began, and she felt herself being forced from control of her own mind and body. She was being made a captive within her own self, as this Other exerted an ever-increasing dominion over her.

  She was angry most of the time now and lashed out at the smallest provocation, often for no reason at all. She had cussed out several teachers in front of the class and told one to fuck off when he sent her to detention. It became almost a sideshow for the other students and might have even been amusing for them, had it not been for the Disturbances.

  Cassie’s classmates, her mom, and teachers sensed something was profoundly wrong with Cassie, and it couldn’t be dismissed as adolescent rebellion. It was something they came to refer to as the Disturbances. Whenever any of them were in her presence, a subtle intuition alerted them to danger. It was the primordial instinct our ancestors felt as stealthy predators stalked through the brush beyond the glow of their campfires. But it wasn’t anything in particular they could point to in Cassie — she was petite in size and posed little threat to them physically. It was something internal to her — some part of her being that they sensed posed a threat not only to their bodies but to their souls. And a warning told them to avoid drawing attention to themselves. But for those unfortunates who ignored that warning, they came away from those encounters gripped by a profound sense of dread.

  Whatever existed inside Cassie, it knew them now.

  Another example of the Disturbances was something they referred to as the Confusion. This occurred mostly in class, although several instances also happened in the cafeteria. The Confusion would occur when someone was speaking and they would find themselves suddenly confounded and at a complete loss for words. It was significantly more severe than a lapse in their train of thought — the Confusion would momentarily sever any association between thoughts and their corresponding words and would leave the speaker staring helplessly into space without the ability to compose thoughts or sentences. All efforts to do so came out as randomly ordered words and sounds that were completely nonsensical.

  The final example of the Disturbances was what is commonly known as “telekinesis.” Several students reported seeing objects appear to move of their own volition. A pencil would fly from a desk, or a book fall from a shelf. One report even had a cafeteria tray fly from a table and across the cafeteria. Cassie’s presence was the common factor in each occurrence.

  As her descent into possession by this spirit (or Other as she called it) progressed, Cassie found herself increasingly acting under sudden irresistible compulsions. There would be the urge, whether it be for sex or drugs or angry outbursts, followed by the action, without any opportunity for deliberation. On one occasion when the urge struck, she had found a student studying in the school library during a break. She led him beneath the bleachers on the football field, ripped his clothes off in a frenzied haste, then mounted him right there on the dirt.

  This boy had gone along quite willingly at first. It was a hookup with a cute, albeit weird, chick, so sure, why not? But as she rode him, with ever-aggressive sways of her pelvis, he happened to catch the look in her eyes — and it was pure animal ferocity that stared back at him. It scared the shit out of him. He pissed himself as he squirmed out from beneath her, then fled in only his drenched boxers and shirt. He understandably never told anyone what had happened.

  The intensity and frequency of the Disturbances and compulsions coincided with the increased dominion the spirit exerted over Cassie. Within two months after the Black Mass, the self that was Cassie no longer had any meaningful control over her body or mind. What remained of that self was left to drown helplessly in a putrid cesspool of bile and wretchedness. It left her without any form of reprieve or the ability to recall any experiences of happiness or joy or love she might draw relief from. There existed only the memory that there had once been memories of those feelings, but without the ability to recall the memories or the feelings themselves.

  Cassie was possessed, and a captive in her own body and mind.

  ****

  Alison came home early from work on the evening of October 31st. Cassie’s school had called to let her know that Cassie had been suspended for using drugs. Alison stormed up the stairs to Cassie’s bedroom and found her door shut. This came as no surprise, since Cassie kept it shut most of the time lately. That was going to end. She knocked twice.

  “Cassie?”

  When there was no answer, she opened the door and stepped inside. Immediately she was hit by the cold. The room felt like ice, and she could actually see her breath.

  She also noticed the stench. It was gut-wrenching, like rotten eggs, or meat left in the sun for weeks. Alison gagged and nearly vomited. She pulled her shirt collar over her nose, but it did nothing to mask that stench. She hurried from the room and into her own bedroom and grabbed a scarf. She wrapped it around her head so it covered her nose and mouth, then returned to Cassie’s bedroom.

  Alison began searching the bedroom for the source of that stench. First she searched the desk, then underneath the bed, then the closet, and finally the bathroom. She half expected to find a dead animal, but in the end she found nothing out of the ordinary; only the usual scattered mess of clothes and papers. Nothing that could be causing that smell.

  As she walked back into the bedroom, she realized something. No matter where she stood in the room, the smell was equally strong. It didn’t come from any area in particular; the room itself was the stench.

  She stood there for a moment puzzled — the inexplicable cold and this stench that, despite the scarf, was still overwhelming — what was happening?

  A vague sense of dread crept over her. Something was seriously wrong in this room — and with her daughter — something that couldn’t be easily explained away.

  She crossed over to Cassie’s desk and began rummaging through it. She knew Cassie kept a journal, and she needed to find it. Maybe something in there could explain Cassie’s increasingly aberrant behavior, and this... this phenomena with the room? Was that the word she was looking for?

  Of course the journal wasn’t in her desk. That would have been too obvious. So next she searched her closet. She rummaged through the clothes and shelves but again came up empty.

  Think, Alison...

  On a hunch, she headed over to the bed and lifted the mattress. There sat the journal, pressed between the mattress and springs.

  She couldn’t stay in the room to read it — not with that stench, and the cold was beginning to sting her arms. So she took the journal with her downstairs to the living room. She sat down on the couch and began reading. And what she read horrified her.

  A good deal of the journal consisted of poems. Alison already knew Cassie loved to write poems and had happily read some of them to Alison and Rick in the past. A past that seemed so distant now. Those poems had been colorful and happy, but what Alison was reading now was not. Cassie’s recent poems showed a morbid preoccupation with darkness and death.

  And with something Cassie called the Other.

  Alison checked her watch. She had just enough time to run to the store before Cassie got home. She grabbed her keys and hurried off.

  ****

  Cassie arrived home that night while Alison was still out. It was already past eight, and Cassie was running late for meeting up with Seth and the girls. She rummaged through her closet, flinging through clothes draped across hangers and digging through piles strewn on her closet floor. Many of them hadn’t been washed in weeks, but she couldn’t care less — it’s not like guys gave a shit what she was wearing; they only cared about what was beneath it.

  “Drugs? You were doing drugs at school?”

  Cassie took a quick glance at the doorway where her mom now stood. She hadn’t even heard her come in.

  “It’s not a big deal,” Cassie said and returned to sorting through her clothes.

  “The hell it’s not,” Alison shot
back. Then she realized Cassie was looking for something to wear. “What’re you doing?”

  “Finding something to wear. Do you mind?”

  “Yes. I do mind. You’re not going out.”

  Cassie stopped, mid-toss of a torn concert T-shirt.

  “Say again?”

  “I said you’re not going out,” Alison declared, realizing it was the first time she had asserted herself to Cassie in a long time. It was something she should have done a lot sooner.

  Cassie shot her a grin. “News for you, Mom. Yes, I am.”

  “News for you, Cass. No, you’re not. And you’re not seeing Seth and those girls anymore.”

  Cassie’s grin turned into a glare. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  Alison confidently folded her arms across her chest. “As long as you’re living in this house, I sure as hell can.”

  Cassie’s glare was now turning to hatred, and vicious thoughts pressed into her mind.

  Fuck her, they told her. What does she know. She’s useless.

  “You can’t stop me,” Cassie snarled.

  “Like hell, I can’t,” Alison shot back.

  “Why? Because you’re my mother? Little late for that, mommy dearest.”

  “That right there. That belligerence. That stops right now.”

  “Big word, Mom. You learn that at the bar, or while sponging off dad all those years.”

  Alison staggered back. That last blow had stung, but there was no way she was going to let Cassie see that.

  “You’re grounded, Cassie.”

  “What?”

  “I said you’re grounded. You’re to come straight home from school, and you’re not to hang around Seth and those girls anymore.”

  The rage inside Cassie was at a boiling point and ready to explode into violence. “Get out!” she shouted, and when Alison just stood there, Cassie hurled a handful of clothes at her.

  “I said get out!”

  The ferocity in Cassie’s voice startled Alison, and she stepped back into the hallway. Cassie stormed over to the door and slammed it shut. Then locked it.