The Exorcist's Apprentice

by Mark Lukens

  Danny set his bottle of Coke down on the countertop to his right, and he followed Paul and Father Severino from the kitchen out to a wide hallway that ran from the front of the house towards the back of the house. Down the hall to their right, the front door stood at the end of the hall. Down the hall to their left was a set of stairs that led up to the second floor. There were other archways in the wide hall that led to other rooms and Father Severino veered right, heading towards an archway closer to the front door.

  Voices drifted out of the room … a quiet conversation.

  They followed Father Severino into the sitting room. Another priest, dressed in black clothes and a white collar, stood up from a recliner. This priest was older than Father Severino and stick-thin. He had close-cropped gray hair and a sunken face shadowed with gray stubble. He reminded Danny of the homeless man who had pounded on the passenger window of Paul’s Bronco only hours earlier at the gas station.

  The resemblance was so striking that Danny nearly stopped in his tracks and nearly stopped breathing.

  But it couldn’t be possible. This couldn’t be the same man. It was just a coincidence.

  The homeless man hadn’t been real, Danny reminded himself.

  There’s danger in that house for you, the homeless man’s voice whispered in his mind.

  “This is Father Andrew Hopkins,” Father Severino said as Paul shuffled forward to shake the old man’s hand.

  “And Robert and Helen Tully,” Father Hopkins said, turning to introduce the middle-aged couple sitting on the couch. They stood up simultaneously, both fit and trim, but at the same time disheveled and ragged.

  Haunted, was the word that came to Danny’s mind.

  Danny could tell from the eyes of these four people that they had gone through hell already in this house.

  The room they were in seemed to be some kind of formal sitting room to Danny. Or at least that was what it would become once the remodeling was finished. The floors were bare panels of subflooring waiting to have wood planking nailed down over them. The trim around one of the windows was peeling with cracked paint and the other window’s casing had already been sanded and the paint scraped away. A rumpled canvas tarp was spread out across the floor underneath the windows where it had collected paint chips and dust. A few hand tools lay on the tarp and the window sill.

  It looked to Danny like all of the work had ceased in this house at one moment. One day they were busy working, and then they just stopped. And they never went back to work again.

  There were two other antique-looking chairs in the room on the other side of the large coffee table that sat in front of the couch.

  After introductions, Robert and Helen sat back down on the couch, close to each other, nearly huddling together like they were cold. Or scared.

  “Robert, Helen, this is the expert I told you about—Paul Lambert. This is who we call when things … get out of hand.”

  “I hope you can do something here,” Helen said and searched Paul’s eyes for an answer.

  “We will,” Paul told her. “With all of us together, and with God’s help, we will drive every unclean spirt out of this house.”

  Danny felt a chill run down his spine just from hearing Paul’s words. Not only the words, but the conviction in his voice.

  The air inside the house was warm and Danny’s throat was suddenly dry. He hated to interrupt, but he really needed a drink from his Coke which he’d left on the kitchen counter. And he needed to use the bathroom.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Tully?” Danny said.

  They looked at Danny.

  “This is my son,” Paul said. “He’ll be assisting me while I’m here.”

  They both smiled, but the smiles looked fake to Danny and he wasn’t sure why.

  “Could I use the bathroom?” Danny asked them.

  “Oh, of course,” Helen said and rocketed back up to her feet from the couch. “Where are my manners?” She seemed like she wanted to move, but her feet stayed rooted to the spot on the floor. “How rude of me. Do you two want something to drink? Or eat?”

  “No thanks,” Paul answered for Danny with a forced smile. “We ate at a small diner in town.”

  “Judy’s?” Father Hopkins asked.

  “Yes,” Paul answered.

  “Good food there.”

  Paul nodded in agreement.

  Robert was up on his feet with a nervous smile smearing his face. He bolted out around the coffee table and rushed to the archway, gesturing for Danny to follow him.

  “Down this hall, past the stairs, there’s a door on the left,” Robert said once they were out in the hallway. “That’s where the downstairs bathroom is.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Danny said and started to walk down the hallway.

  “Please. Just call me Robert.”

  Danny glanced back at him. He nodded and smiled at Robert who watched him walk down the hall. Danny walked towards the stairs that led up into the darkness and then he walked past them; the steps rose higher and higher on his right the farther he walked down the hall. He saw the door tucked into the wall on his left.

  He opened the bathroom door and found another room in the middle of renovation. Strips of wallpaper had been torn away, one wall completely bare. There were no doors on the cabinet that the sink sat on top of, and a few boxes of tile were piled up in the corner near the shower.

  Danny hoped the plumbing worked okay.

  He used the toilet and flushed it. He zipped up his pants.

  And then he froze.

  He heard the sound of creaking wood, like someone had taken a step right outside the bathroom door. It was a cautious and sneaky sound. Danny tried to listen, but he couldn’t hear anything over the running toilet as the bowl filled back up with water.

  Then silence.

  Danny stood still for a long moment, listening. He couldn’t even hear the sounds of Paul and the others talking in the sitting room. It wasn’t that far away from the bathroom, and Danny thought he should be able to hear the sound of their voices carrying down the hallway in this drafty old house.

  He finally walked over to the sink. He washed his hands in the sink and just as he turned the water off, he heard another creak of wood right outside the bathroom door. Like someone had just stepped on a loose floorboard.

  Why couldn’t he hear them talking in the sitting room?

  A strange picture formed in Danny’s mind. He saw Paul and the rest of them all huddled together outside of the bathroom door, all of them waiting for Danny to come out.

  He pushed the thought away, wondering where a stupid image like that had come from. Why was he having such strange thoughts lately?

  He marched to the door and yanked it open.

  No one there.

  He stepped out into the hall and his foot pressed down on a loose floorboard. It made the same creak he had heard inside the bathroom

  Someone had been right outside this door moments ago. Had to be.

  Danny looked down the hall to his right, at the front door far down at the other end of the hall. And then he looked at the archways and doorways to the sitting room, kitchen, and other rooms he hadn’t seen yet. He looked back at the stairs and the wall of the stairwell in front of him. The wall rose up to the ceiling where the stairs disappeared at a landing.

  He stared at the wall for a moment and then he looked left towards the other end of the hall that was shrouded in darkness. The stairwell wall was made up of large decorative wood panels that grew larger as the stairs and wall ascended to the second floor. At the far end of the wall was a door that was designed to look like one of the panels.

  He walked over to the last door/panel that was tucked away next to the wall and stood in front of it. There was a latch on the door with a heavy padlock threaded through the handle.

  What was this? A closet? A door to the basement? Why was it locked?

  To keep people out, he thought.

  Or to keep something in.

  Danny again pushed t
his strange thought away. Where were these thoughts coming from? He had only been in this house for a few minutes and it was already getting to him.

  A flash of movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He turned and swore he had just seen someone dart into a doorway down the hall.

  Danny hurried down the hall, moving like a cat, careful not to stomp his feet on the floor as he rushed to the doorway. He entered a room that could be another family room or a living room, but apparently right now it was being used as storage for furniture. There were stacks of chairs, a few couches, and tables piled up together in the middle of the room. Against the walls were stacks of cardboard boxes and garbage bags.

  Danny stared at the objects that cluttered the large room, and then he saw someone standing in the gloom at the far side of the room.

  It was a girl. He could tell that much. She might have been maybe nine or ten years old, he guessed. It was hard to make out much detail in the dark room, but he thought she wore a white raggedy dress and patent leather shoes. Her clothes looked worn and dirty. He couldn’t see her face because her long dark hair covered it completely, like she was looking down at her feet.

  She turned away from him, almost like she was crying and she didn’t want him to see her.

  “Hey,” Danny called out to her. “You okay?”

  No answer from the girl.

  Danny took two steps towards her, and then she bolted into an archway on that side of the room.

  He ran across the room, skirting around the furniture and boxes, until he came to the doorway. It led to another room that could be an office. This room was nearly empty. No furniture, not many boxes, and no closets to hide in.

  The girl was gone.

  “Where’d you go?” Danny asked the empty room.

  He heard a commotion from behind him; it was coming from the cluttered living room he had just been in. He heard voices and running feet.

  Paul entered the office first, followed by the two priests, and then by Robert and Helen.

  “You okay, Danny?” Paul asked. There was concern in his dark eyes.

  “You get lost, buddy?” Robert asked with a fake smile.

  Danny shook his head no.

  “Exploring?” Helen asked with the same smile Robert had.

  “I saw a girl,” Danny said. “She was like ten years old maybe.” He looked at Helen. “Your daughter?”

  Robert and Helen glanced at each other as the smiles slipped from their faces, and then Helen looked back at Danny. “We don’t have a daughter. We’ve never had any children.”

  CHAP†ER †WEN†Y-SEVEN

  After Paul and Danny got their bags and suitcases out of the Bronco, Father Hopkins showed them to their bedrooms upstairs. These were the same bedrooms both priests had been using since they’d been staying in the house these last few weeks. Each room had a packed suitcase waiting by the door like both priests couldn’t wait to leave this house.

  “Figured we’d go back to town and get a motel room for a few nights since you two are going to be here,” Father Hopkins said when he noticed Paul glancing down at the suitcase by the door.

  “We’ll be here during the day,” Father Hopkins added quickly. “Every day to help with the blessings.”

  Paul nodded. “Thanks.”

  They showed Danny to his temporary bedroom which was as plain as the guest bedroom had been at Paul’s house when he had first gotten there, and then they left him alone to unpack his suitcase.

  He stood in the middle of the room and looked around. There was a neatly-made bed in the middle of the room with its old-fashioned brass headboard shoved tight up against the wall. Above the bed, attached to the plaster wall, was a simple crucifix. An old dresser, wounded with marks and scratches, stood against the opposite wall, directly across from the foot of the bed. There was a mirror attached to the top of the dresser and a straight-backed wooden chair next to it. There was nothing else in the room except for a small walk-in closet with the door wide open.

  Danny shuddered at the sight of the open closet door, thinking of his nightmares back in Paul’s house—thinking of his mother stepping out of the closet in the darkness, her water-logged bare feet squishing on the floorboards …

  He pushed the thought away and rushed over to the closet door and peered inside.

  Perfectly empty … nothing inside except fifteen or twenty wire hangers on the steel rod underneath the top shelf of the closet.

  He left the door open and grabbed his suitcase and duffel bag from the floor. He laid them on the bed and opened them.

  His thoughts turned to the girl he had seen downstairs.

  Had he really seen her?

  Paul told him that she hadn’t really been there. She had been another vision.

  But how could that be? She had seemed so real.

  What is happening to me?

  The homeless man had seemed so real, too. But so had Ricky at the basketball court with his bashed-in head.

  Why was he seeing these visions? He had never seen anything like these visions before that day he walked home from school and saw that blond-haired man with the twisted half-smile and dead eyes.

  What had caused him to start seeing all these visions after that? He had always had nightmares his whole life, but nothing as bad as seeing his dead mother walk out of the closet and hearing her soggy body squish while he smelled the odor of wet rot from the lake.

  Danny forced the image from his mind again. He didn’t want to remember his mother like that.

  He felt like he was losing his mind.

  A soft knock at his bedroom door startled him. He looked down at his suitcase and saw that it was open, but still fully packed. He hadn’t done a thing since he had been in this room. How long had he been standing here?

  The door creaked open and Paul poked his head in. “Everything all right, Danny?”

  Danny nodded.

  “Mind if I come in for a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  Paul entered the bedroom and closed the door.

  Danny sat down on the bed next to his suitcase.

  Paul picked up the wood chair next to the dresser and brought it closer to the bed. He sat down and it creaked from his weight.

  “Danny, I know this is tough for you. But you have to find your strength. You have to build your faith and use it like a shield.”

  “I don’t understand why this is happening,” Danny said and then clamped his mouth shut, afraid he was going to let out a choked cry. He didn’t want to cry in front of Paul again.

  “I know it’s strange at first—your visions. But they are going to keep coming to you whether you want them to or not, whether you’re ready or not. So you have to fight back. You must realize that the things you are seeing are visions, and they are not real.”

  Danny barely nodded.

  “You have a gift, Danny. A gift from God. One of the Gifts of the Spirit. And you can’t turn your back on a gift from God.”

  “I didn’t ask for this gift. I don’t want this gift.”

  “I know. But God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle.”

  Danny sighed. He felt like a fool. He was sure he had embarrassed Paul when he went into a tantrum about seeing the girl in the living room and insisting that Robert and Helen Tully must have a daughter.

  “Listen, Danny. I’m going to say something you might not want to hear.”

  Danny braced himself.

  “You need to see these visions that come to you. They might be important. You need to pay attention to them, and to your dreams. Pay attention to what they are trying to tell you. Some of your visions may be demons in disguise, but others could be spirits with warnings for you.”

  Danny instantly thought of the homeless man at the gas station and his warning about avoiding this house.

  “You need to decipher what you can use and what is a lie,” Paul continued. “The girl you saw downstairs may be a leftover spirt from the past. She may be someone who
lived here a long time ago. But now she might be stuck here. She may have important information for you. Something that could help us here in this house.”

  Danny only nodded.

  “Come on, we’re going to walk through the house. All of us together so we can bless it. Everyone needs to be there. You don’t need to say the prayers we’re saying if you don’t want to. I know you don’t know them yet.”

  “I feel a little embarrassed about seeing the girl. About accusing the Tullys of having a child.”

  “No, don’t be. I’ve talked to Mr. and Mrs. Tully about your gift and the reason you’re here. They’re glad you’re here. They really believe you can help.”

  Danny felt himself brightening up a little. Talking with Paul had really helped some. He stood up, ready to follow Paul downstairs.

  “Just follow us through the house,” Paul said as he stood up and put the wood chair back in its place next to the dresser. “Try to concentrate on your faith. Find your personal relationship with God. Try to reach out to Him. Try to feel His love.”

  †

  Danny walked right behind Paul in the procession. Paul followed Father Hopkins and Father Severino, and Robert and Helen brought up the rear. They walked slowly through the house as Father Hopkins prayed in Latin. He carried a small metal ball that dangled from a chain. There were holes in the metal ball and thick smoke and a sweet scent drifted out of it.

  Danny watched Paul and saw that he was praying. His lips were moving, but Danny couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  They walked throughout the downstairs. They began in the mudroom, and then they walked through the kitchen. They walked out into the hall and they visited the rooms one by one: the sitting room, the dining room, the living room with the attached office where Danny had seen the girl.

  Then they went upstairs and entered each bedroom and bathroom.