My Best Friend's Exorcism

by Grady Hendrix

  Brother Lemon’s face got tight, his jaw clenched, his joints got stiff. Then he pulled a prayer sheet from his Bible and read from it, using a finger to keep his place. This time Gretchen repeated him, but just a second behind. The time after that, she spoke in an English accent. She threw him off the time after that, and the time after that, and the time after that.

  The exorcist prayed for so long and so hard that he blew out his voice. Abby’s kneecaps creaked. Her feet were swollen. She leaned her back against the doorframe, then shifted from one foot to the other, stretched, touched her toes, cracked her knees. Her shoulders ached. From time to time, Brother Lemon would shoot her an annoyed look, but mostly he concentrated on reading from his paper, again and again and again.

  Finally, Brother Lemon stormed out of the room. Abby turned to follow.

  “Wait!” Gretchen hissed. Her throat sounded sore.

  Abby turned around. Gretchen was looking at her.

  “I’m scared,” Gretchen said. “I’m really, really scared. This guy is crazy, and I’ve been here for a long time. Tell him I’m not possessed.”

  Abby looked down at her watch. It was past two in the morning. By now Gretchen’s parents would be home. They’d have seen Max in the shower, they’d have realized their daughter was missing. The police would be looking for them.

  “Come on, this is crazy,” Gretchen whispered. “You have to know this is crazy. This is how people get killed.”

  Abby looked through the doorway into the dark living room but didn’t see Brother Lemon.

  “Are you scared of him?” Gretchen asked. “Is he making you do this?”

  Abby turned back to Gretchen.

  “I’m scared of you,” she said.

  She got out before Gretchen could say anything else and found Brother Lemon in the kitchen, slamming through the cabinets.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “What’s happening,” he said, his voice constricted, “is that we need a provocation to draw out the demon. Things are escalating, Abby. We are at DEFCON 3.”

  He picked up a dark blue canister of Morton’s iodized salt and gave it a shake. It was almost full.

  “What does that mean?” Abby asked.

  “It means,” he said, setting the salt on the counter, “that I need you to join hands and pray with me over this salt. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .”

  They said the Lord’s Prayer over the salt three times and then went back to the bedroom. Gretchen was squirming on the bed.

  “I’ve never done anything to hurt you,” she said. “Please, please, please, think about—”

  Brother Lemon filled his hand with salt.

  “In the name of Jesus, I remove you,” he proclaimed. “Spirit of discord and disharmony, I send you to the cross.”

  With that, he dashed the fistful of salt in Gretchen’s face. She recoiled and sputtered. He poured another handful.

  “In the name of Jesus, I remove you,” he repeated. “Spirit of discord and disharmony, I send you to the cross.”

  This time he threw the salt so hard, it left a mark on Gretchen’s right cheek. Then he did it again. Salt was in Gretchen’s nose, stuck to the spit on her chin and in the folds of her neck. It was in her hair, collecting in the wet corners of her eyes.

  “In the name of Jesus, I remove you,” Brother Lemon said again. “Spirit of discord and disharmony, I send you to the cross.”

  He smashed another handful of salt into Gretchen’s face. She began to weep. The next time Brother Lemon drew back his arm to hurl more salt into Gretchen’s face, Abby touched it. He whirled on her.

  “You’re hurting her,” Abby whispered. “I don’t understand why we’re hurting her.”

  “It is right to mortify the flesh of the demoniac to draw out the demon,” Brother Lemon said.

  He lashed the fistful of salt onto Gretchen’s face as she rolled from side to side, trying to protect herself. Her lips moved and she said something, but it was so faint Abby couldn’t hear.

  “You’re so smart?” Brother Lemon shouted, his face inches from Gretchen’s. “If you’re so smart, why are you tied to a bed and I’m standing up here?”

  Something broke behind Gretchen’s face and she crumbled into tears, blowing spit bubbles, her body shaking, her face blotchy.

  “That’s right!” Brother Lemon shouted, smashing another fistful of salt into her face. “Tell me your name, truth to God, tell me your name, demon! Tell me your name!”

  There was the sound of a faucet turning on, of hissing from a leak, and the front of Gretchen’s shorts turned dark. A rivulet of urine raced from her crotch, down her right leg, pooling at her knee. Its briny tang filled the cold room. Abby was ashamed for her.

  “She’s going to the bathroom,” she said.

  Brother Lemon turned to her.

  “Get a towel and run warm water on it,” he said.

  Abby went to the kitchen and found a dish towel. When she turned on the tap, the pipes vibrated in the walls and the spigot spat rusty water, then ice water, then a lukewarm trickle. She soaked the towel and rushed back into the room.

  Brother Lemon was praying, holding his hands over Gretchen.

  “Go on now,” Brother Lemon said. “Clean her up.”

  “Me?” Abby asked stupidly.

  “I must avoid touching any areas of the demoniac that might open the doorway to lust,” he said.

  Nervously, Abby stepped toward the bed and mopped at Gretchen’s leg. Brother Lemon found a plastic bucket and Abby wrung the cloth into it. At first, touching Gretchen’s urine disgusted her; then she started regarding Gretchen not as her friend, or even as a person, but as a thing to be cleaned, a car to be washed, and the task became easier.

  “Abby?” Gretchen sobbed. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  This time, Abby didn’t have an answer.

  Brother Lemon left the room briefly but then came striding back, brushing past Abby. He marched to the head of the bed, poured salt into his hands, and bent over Gretchen, who began to struggle.

  “No!” she shouted. “No, get off me. Get off me! Abby! ABBYYYY!!!! Help! Heeeelp!”

  Brother Lemon smashed another handful of salt into her face.

  “Step back, Satan,” he commanded.

  Another blast of salt.

  “Tempt me not with vain things,” he said.

  Another fistful of salt. Gretchen’s body was shaking helplessly.

  “What you offer is evil, Satan,” Brother Lemon shouted.

  More salt blasted Gretchen’s face.

  “Tell me your name, unholy one,” Brother Lemon shouted, his neck swollen and strained. “Truth before God. Tell me your name.”

  Gretchen had given up struggling, her eyes were closed, her chest heaved. Brother Lemon pressed on her sternum, right below her throat, and Gretchen began to hiccup convulsively, unable to draw a deep breath.

  “Andras.”

  At first Abby wasn’t sure where the whispered word had come from, but then she saw Gretchen’s lips move as she said it again.

  “Andras,” she whispered. “Its name is Andras.”

  Gretchen opened her red shimmering eyes, and tears rolled down her temples.

  “No,” a deeper male voice said with Gretchen’s mouth. “No crying, pig!”

  “Abby,” Gretchen pleaded. “Get it out of me. Please, get it out.”

  Two people were fighting to be visible on Gretchen’s face.

  “Help me,” she choked. “Please, help me.”

  Brother Lemon slapped his Bible against one of his palms.

  “Hot damn!” he shouted. “We got ourselves a demon!”

  I Think We’re Alone Now

  The living room was dark and wind whistled through the windows, making the walls creak.
The cold shrank Abby inside her clothes. Brother Lemon pulled out a baggie containing a chicken breast from his cooler and sat in a chair, eating it like a Popsicle.

  “Sorry about this,” he said, his massive jaws grinding the meat. “Andras is the sixty-third entity in the Lesser Key of Solomon, a grand marquis of hell and commander of thirty legions of demons, known as the sower of discord and bringer of ruin. I need to protein-load.”

  The back wall of the Langs’ beach house was all windows, looking out across a screened-in porch to the Atlantic Ocean. Barely visible beyond were the waves, gray and angry, capped with white chop. To the far left, a wound sliced across the horizon and orange light was bleeding through. It was just after five a.m.

  “We’ve been here all night,” Abby said. “What if you can’t do it?”

  “Listen, Abby,” he said. “When you came to me and said your friend had a demon from hell nesting in her soul, did I say you were crazy? Did I make fun of you? Nuh-uh. I believed you. Now you need to believe me.”

  “But what if you can’t do it?” Abby repeated. “You barely even got it to tell you its name.”

  Brother Lemon brought his chair over and set it down in front of her.

  “An exorcism is a harrowing,” he said. “Do you know what that means? It’s a test of the exorcist, a trial for his soul. You know why we can’t just ask the demon to leave? After all, the Lord’s strong right arm is by our side, and through God all things are possible. Christ the Savior could blast that demon out of your friend like that,” he said, snapping his thick fingers in the cold air.

  “But an exorcism tests us. It asks, ‘How strong is your faith? How deep is your belief?’ The exorcist must be willing to lose everything—all dignity, all safety, all illusions—everything is burned away in the fire of the exorcism, and what’s left is the core of who you are. It’s like lifting—when you’re deep in a set, your arms are shaking and you’re a melting candle of pain that’s burned down to zero; you got nothing left to give. And in that darkest moment you cry out, ‘Lord, I can’t!’ and a voice comes out of the darkness and says, ‘But I can.’ That’s the still, small voice that comes in the night. That’s the sound of something bigger than yourself. That’s God talking. And he says, ‘You are not alone,’ and enfolds you in wings of the eagle, and he carries you up. But first you have to burn away everything that doesn’t matter. You have to burn away leg warmers and New Age crystals, and Madonna, and aerobics, and New Kids on the Block, and the boy you’re sweet on in school. You burn away your parents, and your friends, and everything you ever cared about, and you burn away personal safety, conventional morality. And when all that is gone, when everything is swept away in the fire and everything around you is ash, what you have left is just a tiny nugget, a little kernel of something that is good, and pure, and true. And you pick that pebble up, and you throw it at the fortress this demon has built in your friend’s soul, this leviathan of hatred and fear and oppression, and you throw this tiny pebble and it hits that wall and it goes ping . . . and nothing happens. That’s when you’ll have the hardest doubts you ever had in your life. But never doubt the truth. Never underestimate it. Because a second later, if you’ve been through the fire, you’ll hear the cracks start to spread, and all those mighty walls and iron gates will collapse like a house of cards because you have harrowed yourself until all that’s left is truth. That’s what that pebble is, Abby. It’s our core. Few things are true in this life, and nothing can stand against them. The truth slices through the armies of the Enemy like the sword of righteousness. But to get there, to find the truth, we go through this trial, we submit ourselves to this exorcism. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  He leaned back and regarded Abby.

  “But,” she said, “what if we get arrested?”

  Brother Lemon sighed.

  “Think on what I said,” he told her, standing up. “And in the meantime, do what I do and say what I tell you to say. Can you do that? Just for a little while longer? We’ve come this far.”

  Abby nodded. She was in too deep to quit now.

  “Good,” Brother Lemon said. “Now let’s blast this demon back to hell.”

  Gretchen watched them from the bed, grains of salt crusted around her eyes and mouth, salt in her hair, salt in her ears. Brother Lemon raised a glass of water that he’d prayed over in the living room.

  “Thirsty?” he asked.

  Gretchen’s tongue snaked out of her mouth and ran around her chapped lips. It was coated with a thick, white film. Brother Lemon knelt by the head of the bed, holding the glass so she could sip from it. At the first taste, she threw herself back, thrashing and howling. Brother Lemon dashed the water into her face.

  “Blessed water!” he said triumphantly. “I drown you in God’s holy love!”

  Foam spilled from Gretchen’s lips as her eyes rolled back into her head, leaving only the bloodshot whites exposed.

  “Gut, head, heart, groin!” Brother Lemon shouted, pressing his Bible against each part of Gretchen’s body as he named them. “Face me, liar. Don’t you hide. Face me!”

  A deep rumble emerged from Gretchen’s lips, a sound driven from the bottom of her stomach. The room filled with a dusty stench that Abby couldn’t place. “Get it out,” she gasped, her voice weak. “It’s going deeper. It hurts. It huuurts . . .”

  Her voice disappeared in a hiss of pain. Brother Lemon sniffed the air.

  “Cinnamon,” he said, smiling, and turned to Abby. “Smell that? Olfactory discernment. The unnatural odor of a supernatural presence.”

  “There’s not much of me left,” Gretchen gasped, her throat spasming. “I’m drowning . . . he’s drowning me . . .”

  Brother Lemon brushed past Abby, hurrying out of the room. He returned a moment later carrying a yellow plastic funnel and a gallon jug of Heinz distilled white vinegar. He used his massive hands to bend Gretchen’s head backward and forced the funnel between her teeth. She released great, angry whooping moans around it.

  “Hold her legs!” Brother Lemon shouted.

  Using one hand, he twisted the top off the jug. He used his teeth to pull off the white paper disk and spat it onto the bed. Upending the bottle, he sloshed a third of the liquid down the funnel.

  Gretchen choked, gagged, kicked her heels against the mattress. The vinegar sting burned Abby’s eyes. Brother Lemon pulled out the funnel and held Gretchen’s mouth closed.

  “Bucket!” he roared, as Gretchen thrashed beneath him.

  Abby grabbed the bucket from where it was lying on the floor and held it out to him.

  “Closer!” he yelled. “By her head!”

  Abby got there just as he released Gretchen’s mouth, and she threw up all over her shirt. Brother Lemon twisted her to the side and she vomited thin yellow liquid. Then he repeated the process while Abby stood there, holding the bucket. This time, a gout of vomit sprayed the bucket in a high-pressure blast.

  “I take up the sword of God’s spirit,” Brother Lemon said, forcing the funnel between Gretchen’s teeth. “I pierce you, driving away your lies.”

  “It’s hiding,” Gretchen gasped. “Down deep, it’s going. . . . Do you think this hurts me?” Her voice dropped lower, her vocal cords rasped and scraped. “You’re damning your souls, both of you. You’re throwing away your salvation by torturing this pig. What would your God say?”

  Gretchen’s head snapped back on her neck, and she bit her tongue. Her eyes opened, unclouded.

  “Don’t listen,” she said. “Do it. Get it out. Get it out of me.”

  Brother Lemon stood up and turned to Abby.

  “I want you to go into the kitchen,” he said. “See if you can find some ammonia under the sink. We’re going to have a real fight now.”

  Abby found half a bottle of ammonia under the sink, but she lied and said she didn’t, so Brother Lemon kept using the vinegar. The
struggle went on for hours. Abby’s role was limited to saying “Christ have mercy on us” when Brother Lemon cued her, emptying the bucket as Gretchen filled it with progressively thinner and smaller amounts of bile, and holding down Gretchen’s legs. The guest bedroom warmed from their body heat until it felt like a sauna and condensation trickled down the walls. When they finally stepped out for a break, the sunlight burned their eyes.

  They sat in the living room and Brother Lemon chugged water from a gallon jug. He sucked down half and poured the rest over his head and shook it, spraying cold water.

  “Brrr!” he exclaimed. “Want some of this? It wakes you up.”

  “There has to be another way,” Abby said.

  “Don’t you worry,” Brother Lemon said. “Andras thinks he’s in the catbird seat, but he’s about to feel the boot of the Lord in his ass. Go fill the tub.”

  Abby’s heart sank. “Why?”

  “Full-immersion baptism,” Brother Lemon said, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. “The more we mortify the flesh, the harder we sanctify the spirit, the tougher it is for the demon to hide.”

  Abby imagined him lowering a bound Gretchen into the bathtub as she kicked and screamed, pressing her to the bottom of the tub, bubbles rising from her mouth.

  “No,” she said. “It’s too much.”

  Brother Lemon pointed a beefy finger at her.

  “Don’t coward out on me now,” he said. “You heard her. She wants it out.”

  Abby shook her head.

  “What good is the exorcism if she’s dead?”

  The exorcist considered Abby for a moment. Then he headed for the kitchen, shaking his head. “I’ll just do it myself,” he said. “Lonely are those who serve the Lord.”

  Abby heard him clanging around, followed by the sound of the sink running. Then it was quiet. She crept back into the guest bedroom. It smelled like rancid piss and sour vomit. Gretchen had stopped shaking and her skin was grainy with goosebumps. Her breathing was shallow. Her face was raw and wet, her lips swollen and bruised, cracked and chapped from the vinegar. Salt was in her hair, and her eyes were swollen and pink. She raised a bound hand as much as she could and beckoned for Abby to come closer.