by Mark Lukens
My new bedroom, Danny thought.
My new life.
He felt depressed. He always felt depressed these days.
Danny told Paul that he was tired and that he wanted to go to sleep. He brushed his teeth in the hall bathroom and changed into a pair of sweat pants and a thermal shirt. It was chilly in Paul’s house. Did he even have the heat turned on? But Danny didn’t complain.
He lay there in the dark with the bedroom door halfway open. Paul had left the light in the guest bathroom on for him in case he needed to get up in the middle of the night.
Danny was glad Paul had left the bathroom light on; he didn’t want to be by himself in the dark right now.
He lay there for a while, staring at the shaft of light shining into his bedroom from the hallway. He listened to the creaks and groans of the old house—new noises he would have to get used to. Other than those noises, the house was silent. Danny didn’t hear Paul anywhere in the house. He figured Paul had gone to bed, but he wasn’t sure.
Danny couldn’t sleep. He rolled over and turned on the lamp next to the bed and reached underneath his bed for his shoebox. He rolled over on his side, almost like he was curling his body around the shoebox as he went through the photos, staring at them for a long time.
He couldn’t believe his mother and sister were really gone.
God, he missed them so much.
A noise at his door startled Danny. He turned around and sat up in bed. He looked at the doorway and saw Paul standing there. He was dressed in a pair of gray sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt that didn’t conceal his muscular body too well.
“You okay?” Paul asked.
Danny wiped the tears out of his eyes quickly.
“It’s okay to grieve,” Paul said.
Danny nodded. He thought Paul might enter the room and come over to his bed, maybe sit down next to him, perhaps try to console him or maybe even give him a hug. Danny didn’t want any of that right now, and it was almost like Paul knew that.
Paul stood motionless in the doorway.
“It’s just not fair,” Danny said even before he realized he was going to say anything. “I can’t remember anything about the accident.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Paul told him. “Give it a few more days. Or a few weeks. I’m sure the memories will come back.”
Danny only nodded.
“You may not be remembering because you don’t want to remember right now. It may be your own mind’s way of protecting you.”
Danny didn’t say anything.
“I’m not a doctor,” Paul said. “But I know some people at the church you can talk to.”
Danny sat very still, just watching Paul in the doorway.
“But only if you want to,” Paul added quickly. “No pressure.”
“Yeah. Thanks. I think I just want to be alone for a while.”
Paul nodded and stepped out of the doorway without a sound. He closed the door, but left it open just a crack. A slim shaft of light poured in from the hallway.
Danny lay back down, curling his body around the shoebox again. He picked up a photo of his sister, stared at it a moment, then buried his face in his pillow and sobbed.
CHAP†ER NINE†EEN
Danny woke up in the darkness of the bedroom.
For a panicked moment Danny didn’t know where he was. He thought for a few seconds that he was back home in his house in Cleveland, Ohio; he thought he was waking up from a nightmare that his mother and sister had drowned in a lake after they had crashed their car into it.
But then it all came rushing back to him.
He wasn’t at home anymore. He was at his father’s house. At Paul’s house. And his mother and sister were dead.
He sat up in bed in the darkness and realized that he must’ve turned off the lamp beside his bed in the middle of the night, but he didn’t remember doing it. The bedroom door was all the way closed now and no shaft of light from the guest bathroom shined in. He couldn’t even see the strip of light underneath the door so the hall bathroom light must be off. The streetlight from outside the only window in the bedroom shined in and allowed him just enough light to see half of the bedroom which was washed in a yellowish-orange light, but the other half of the room, the part of the room with the closet, was still in darkness.
Something had awakened him from a sound sleep—some kind of noise.
He didn’t like being in the dark, and he mentally cursed Paul for turning off the hall bathroom light when he had promised to keep it on all night.
Then another thought occurred to Danny, a thought that sent an icepick of panic through him—maybe the electricity had gone out. Maybe he was trapped in this darkness for a moment.
Danny heard a voice whispering from the darker side of the room.
A familiar whisper.
His mother’s voice.
“Danny …”
Danny stared into the dark side of the room, towards the closet. He couldn’t see anything over there.
Why was it so dark in here? It shouldn’t be this dark.
He heard the closet door creaking open. He heard the sound of wet footsteps on the wood floor. He heard the squish of water from each saturated footstep. He caught the scent of murky water and rot in the air. He heard wet breathing, the gurgling of lungs full of liquid trying to work.
And then he saw the shadow of a woman shuffling towards the foot of his bed in the darkness, emerging from the blackness. She was getting closer and closer to the lighter side of the room.
“Danny … come down here with me … I’m so lonely …”
Danny spun around in his bed and pawed at the lamp, fumbling with it, almost knocking it over. He didn’t hear the wet footprints or gurgling breathing anymore; he only heard the rushing of blood in his ears from his hammering heartbeat.
The rushing in his ears sounded like …
…water …
… rushing water … dark … only the flickering lights from the dashboard of his mother’s car …
Paul burst into Danny’s bedroom just as he managed to get his lamp turned on.
“You okay?” Paul asked as he stood a few steps inside Danny’s bedroom with the door wide open behind him. The light from the hall bathroom shined into the room from behind Paul, silhouetting him.
“Uh … yeah,” Danny breathed out.
“You were screaming.”
That shocked Danny a little—he didn’t remember screaming.
“It was just a nightmare,” Danny finally said.
Paul didn’t respond. He just stood there.
Danny looked past his father at the light coming from the hallway. He was sure that the light hadn’t been on a moment ago, but now it was. He wanted to ask Paul if he had just turned the light on, but he didn’t.
“Wake me up if you need anything,” Paul said, and then he walked out of the bedroom, leaving the door halfway open.
Danny let out a long breath, his heartrate slowing back down to a normal speed and his trembling beginning to subside. He was afraid to look across the bedroom at the closet door, afraid he would see wet footprints on the wood floor leading from the doorway to the bed, maybe the slimy remnants of a plant from the bottom of the lake spread across the floor like a black banana peel.
But he made himself look, and there were no footprints on the floor.
It had seemed so real.
And then he remembered seeing brief flashes in his nightmares of the crash that had killed his mother and sister. He remembered feeling suspended in the cold, dark water. He remembered the lights flickering on the dashboard of the car. The headlights were also flickering as the electrical system in the car shorted out.
Maybe his memories were beginning to come back.
But did he want them to?
Danny rolled over and noticed that the shoebox wasn’t on the bed anymore. Had he knocked it off the bed in the middle of the night? The last thing he remembered was crying into his pillow.
&nbs
p; He leaned over the side of the bed and looked down at the floor. He didn’t see the shoebox on the floor with its contents spilled out.
He got off the bed and got down on the floor on his hands and knees. He checked underneath the bed, steeling himself, praying that he wouldn’t see his mother stuffed under there, grinning at him, reaching for him with bloated fingers.
The shoebox was safely tucked underneath the bed. He hadn’t remembered putting it back there. But he also hadn’t remembered turning off the lamp next to the bed.
Maybe he had just been overly-exhausted.
He needed sleep, he knew that, but he was afraid it would be a while before he fell back to sleep so he got back in bed and just laid there with the lamp on.
CHAP†ER †WEN†Y
Before Paul and Danny had gotten back to Boston from Cleveland, Paul had called Father McFadden and expressed his apologies for the lateness of his report about the exorcism at the Whittier house. But with what had happened with Paul’s ex-wife and children, Father McFadden completely understood.
Paul had stayed up late into the night and read through the report of the Whittier exorcism a few more times. He had included everything in the report, including his own failings. It had been a difficult report to write, a difficult experience to re-live in words. Paul had been to nearly a hundred investigations over his ten year career. Most of them had been in the United States, but he had been to a few outside the country: one in Ireland, two in Mexico, three in Canada, and one in Italy. Many of the investigations had been ordered by Father McFadden, but Paul worked for other churches. But of all of the investigations he had been sent to, and of all the things he had experienced, the Whittier exorcism (and the death of his daughter and ex-wife after it) had been the worst by far.
He printed out the report this morning and slipped the papers and a copy of the tape recording into a large manila envelope. He folded the tab down and sealed it with a blob of hot wax. He pushed a stamp with the Lambert family crest down into the wax—the seal was from a family line that went back centuries, longer than he had ever imagined until he began training under his own father to become an Investigator and he had learned about their family line.
Paul left the large yellow envelope on his desk for the wax to cool. He got up and left his office. He crept down the short hallway and looked at Danny’s half open bedroom door. He peeked inside and saw that Danny was still asleep with his lamp still on.
It had been a rough night for Danny. When Paul had rushed into his son’s bedroom in the middle of the night after hearing his screams, Danny had told him he’d just had a nightmare.
But Paul suspected worse. He suspected the demons that had warned Paul, the demons that were after his family, the Terror By Night, were after his son now, trying to take the last member of his family away.
Paul couldn’t let that happen.
He decided to let Danny sleep a little longer. He knew he needed his rest; he needed to build his strength up.
Paul went downstairs, carefully avoiding the creaky parts of the steps. In the kitchen, he set out a box of Special K cereal and almond milk for Danny’s breakfast. He was pretty sure Danny wouldn’t find this meal appetizing, but it was all he had for breakfast. Maybe they would go to the grocery store if Danny was up to it, and then he could pick out some food he liked. Maybe they could pick up a few slices of pizza at Al’s for lunch.
He grabbed a big bottle of water out of the refrigerator and headed out to the garage. He needed a workout. He was afraid the pounding on the punching bag might wake Danny up, and if that happened then so be it.
Danny needed to get up soon. They had some things to discuss.
†
Danny jumped awake to a dull pounding noise. At first he thought the pounding might have been a headache throbbing inside his skull, but then he realized that the pounding was reverberating throughout the house. It was a low thump, barely audible, but definitely there.
He got out of bed and turned the lamp off. He slipped out into the hallway. His dad’s bedroom door was wide open, the bed neatly made.
Danny hurried downstairs and the pounding was louder down here. Paul wasn’t in the living room. Danny peeked out through the blinds that covered the front windows, but he didn’t see Paul outside anywhere. He hurried to the kitchen and the pounding was even louder in here. It wasn’t a rhythmic pounding, it was more random than that.
It was coming from the garage.
What was Paul doing in there?
Danny rushed across the kitchen to the garage door and opened it slightly, peeking out through the crack. He saw Paul brutalizing a punching bag with blows. The interior of the garage was gloomy, but Danny saw Paul clearly. He wore only his pair of sweatpants—he had stripped off his shirt.
Paul had the body of a warrior. His large, angular muscles were spider-webbed with thick veins. A scar ran down along his left side, and he had a few other smaller scars on his arms. But perhaps the most striking and surprising thing about Paul’s body were the tattoos that covered much of his skin. A large crucifix took up much of his back. The top of the cross started at the back of his neck and went all the way down to the waistband of his jogging pants; both points of the arms of the cross reached out to each of his rear delts. There were a series of words written in places near the cross, sentences in fancy script. Danny couldn’t read them from where he was standing, but he guessed they were quotes of Scripture. Paul had smaller tattoos on his chest, abs, and arms; many of them were smaller crosses and more writing.
Paul’s punches to the bag were pulverizing solid thumps. He was powerful, but also lightning-fast. A sheen of perspiration covered his body and his dark hair was slicked back with sweat.
Paul stopped punching when he noticed Danny standing in the doorway.
“You’re up,” Paul said.
“Yeah,” Danny answered, and he opened the door all the way and stepped down into the garage.
“There’s some cereal on the table. Milk in the fridge. We’ll go to the store in a little while so you can pick out some stuff to eat.”
Danny nodded. “Okay.”
Danny spotted the woodshop on the other side of the garage, but he didn’t walk over to it. He saw the scattered pieces of wood on the countertop underneath the pegboard of tools, but he didn’t ask about them.
“Go ahead and eat something,” Paul said.
Danny nodded and left the garage.
He walked over to the kitchen table and stared at the cereal box. Special K? Not really his kind of cereal. He looked for more cereal boxes in the pantry and cabinets, but Special K was his only choice. Maybe he could sprinkle some sugar on it. He grabbed the milk out of the refrigerator, but then he noticed that it wasn’t even really milk—it was something called almond milk.
Cereal was now out of the question. He looked for alternatives to his breakfast in the fridge and cabinets. No sodas. No sweet tea. No junk food in the freezer or snack cakes in the pantry. Paul was obviously a health nut.
Deciding to skip breakfast, Danny went back upstairs. He was on his way back to his bedroom, but he stopped by the office door like he was suddenly drawn to it.
He could still hear the slight pounding from downstairs, so he ventured inside to snoop around a little. He walked to the wall of bookshelves and studied the titles of some of the books—but some of the titles were written in a language he didn’t understand.
Clauicula Salomonis
Lemegeton.
The Grimoire of Solomon.
There were dozens and dozens of books on demonology, classifications of demons, histories of demons. There were cases after cases of demonic possessions and exorcisms. There were books on the occult, witchcraft, and the dark arts. There were books on outdoor survival, self-defense, and weapons training. There were a dozen different bibles in different languages—and some of them looked ancient. Speaking of ancient, on the shelves next to the books were a few odd sculptures and small statues carved from stone. Cross
es and crucifixes hung on the walls all around the room.
Danny’s eyes were drawn to Paul’s large desk. The top was cluttered with papers and a few open books, like Paul had been working there recently. The messy desk and office were a contrast to the rest of his neat and orderly house. This room was cluttered where the rest of the house was sparse. This room looked lived-in, it looked used, it had technology (a computer, a printer, a phone, the internet). It was like this room was the focus of Paul’s life and the rest of the house served only basic functions like shelter, sleep, and food.
He spotted a manila envelope in the middle of the desk with an old-fashioned wax seal on it—just like out of some medieval film. Danny picked up the envelope and turned it over carefully. He read the two words written across the front in neat handwriting: Father McFadden.
He laid the envelope back down on the desk and went over to the corkboards. He studied the cutout newspaper articles and internet printouts.
Girl in Arkansas: possible demonic possession case.
Satanic objects found at a murder scene in Los Angeles.
Mysterious circumstances surround a death in Rome, Italy.
Ritualistic killings near the Texas/Mexico border.
Some of the articles had words or phrases underlined or highlighted in a yellow marker. Some of the articles had handwritten notes on them, the same neat handwriting that was on the yellow envelope on the desk.
Danny walked over to a small closet and opened the door. He saw dark clothing hanging in a line right in front of him—they looked like trench coats, sweaters, jackets, a few pairs of pants. On the floor there were a few pairs of black boots that laced up in the front. And next to the boots was a dark canvas bag bulging with something inside. There were weapons leaning against the corner in the back of the closet behind the hanging clothes. They looked like swords and staffs, but not replicas—the real thing.
But what really caught Danny’s eye were the stacks of black boxes on top of the closet. They were all small and rectangular, and they were all painted black. But Danny could see hundreds of symbols carved into the wood boxes. Maybe it was Hebrew writing, he thought. Or Greek. Or some other language. Some of it looked like symbols or hieroglyphics. But the strangest thing was that each box was wrapped tightly in some kind of metal wire.