by K. J. Emrick
“Darcy, I did not attack you. I came into the house and found you on the floor.”
She didn’t argue with him. There was no reason to debate it again with him. She’d spent nearly a half an hour trying to explain that when people were possessed by ghosts they didn’t always remember what the ghost did while in their body. She’d checked him over, felt for another spirit being overlaid on his, and there wasn’t any. Nathaniel Williams had left him alone. For now.
She wasn’t afraid of Jon, necessarily. He hadn’t done anything to her. It might have been his hands that did the attacking, but it had not been his mind, his spirit. It hadn’t been him.
The thought of him killing Bonnie Verhault in that same sort of state, with his hands stabbing her over and over while his mind went on hiatus, was even more disturbing to her. Neither of them had brought that up. What would they do if physical trace evidence linked Jon to that crime? The Devil made me do it had gone out of style as a defense decades ago.
There was nothing they could say that would make that killing all right. For the police, or for Jon either. Darcy knew what kind of man he was. Knowing that he had killed a woman, whether or not he was possessed when he did it, would tear him apart.
“Look,” she said instead, “we’ve got the ghost locked out of here for right now. Let’s just make use of our time and find out what we need to stop him for good.”
“Fine by me,” he grumped. “So this is an Exorcism 101 textbook?”
“Something like that,” she agreed, managing a wisp of a smile at Jon’s wry sense of humor. No matter what, he would always be Jon to her.
In her dream, Great Aunt Millie had told her that there was a method and a way to do the exorcism. Two separate things. The method would be spelled out in the book. Forms, conjurings to recite, that sort of thing. All of that could be spelled out in black and white. The way to do the exorcism was different. Hopefully, the book would point her toward that as well.
When Darcy did a communication, it was a calling for a particular ghost to come to her. She provided a path for them to connect with her for a little while. By doing so, a ghost could find its way back to the realm of the living to speak to her. An exorcism was the exact opposite. The exorcism would provide a way for a ghost to leave the Earth, for good. It was like pushing an unwanted houseguest out of a door. The exorcism opened the door. That was the method. But she also would need something to create the way to the door and out the other side.
A method, and a way.
Starting at the first page of the book, Darcy smelled the pleasant scent of old paper, felt the smooth texture of the pages beneath her fingers. She loved books. It was comforting to have something this solid and real in her hands as she searched for the answers they needed.
Page by page, she read through the carefully written text of the book. Searching from the front to the back, she soon got to the last page. Then she frowned, flipped the page back and forward again, wondering if she had missed something.
There was nothing there.
Darcy blinked. That couldn’t be right. Why would Millie and Smudge point her towards a book that had nothing to do with the problem at hand? She thought back to her dream, remembering every detail that she could. No. This was definitely the book that Millie had pointed to. The one Smudge had tried to take off the shelf in his teeth.
Flipping back to page one, she read through it again. She smelled the pleasant scent of old paper, felt the smooth texture of the pages beneath her fingers as she turned them one after the other, reading through the carefully printed words of each chapter. There was a lot of information in this book. A lot of interesting facts about ghosts and the world of the hereafter.
Nothing on exorcisms.
“What is it?” Jon asked.
“It’s not here,” Darcy said, scrunching her eyebrows, not able to believe what she was seeing. “There’s nothing in this book on exorcisms at all, Jon.”
“Are you sure?” He came to stand behind her, leaning down over her shoulder. “Because I was sure I saw…right here. What’s this?”
Darcy looked down to where his finger pointed at a title in bold, illuminated letters. She sighed patiently and turned to look up at him. “That isn’t what we’re looking for. We need to learn about exorcisms. How is this going to help?”
He stared at her blankly. “Because that’s what it says.”
She had been about to argue with him more but the words died on her lips. What was he talking about? Turning back to the book, she ran her fingers over the title he had indicated, smelling the pleasant scent of old paper, feeling the smooth texture of the page as she started to rip it out of the book.
“Darcy!” he shouted, grabbing her hands. “Darcy stop it! What are you doing?”
She struggled against him, making the neat tear she had started along the inside edge of the page cut away in a jagged line across the middle of the paper. She gasped and pulled her hands away from the book as fast as she could, shocked at what she had done.
“Jon…I don’t understand.” She didn’t, either. Had she really done that? What was she thinking? “Look, I’m sorry. I guess I’m just frustrated because I can’t find what I need. We have to do something about Nathaniel Williams now, before he gets someone else hurt.”
Jon looked like he was ready to pounce on her again if he needed to, but he pointed back down at the page of the book she had nearly ruined. “Darcy. Look at what it says right there. Tell me what you see.”
They didn’t have time for games like this, and she was furious that he was going on about what simply wasn’t there, but she did as he asked anyway, figuring it would be the quickest way to get back to actually finding answers to this mystery. Staring down at the title on the page she read the words, then turned back to him.
And forgot what she had just read.
Jon’s eyes showed her that he knew what had just happened to her. She saw concern there, but also a little fear. This was silly. It simply didn’t say anything important. Turning in her chair again she read the title one more time.
Only, it was gone again as soon as she read it.
Concentrating, focusing harder, she saw the letters squiggle on the page and blur and twist until she clenched her jaw and narrowed her eyes and made them stay in place so she could read them.
“The Art of the Exorcism Method.” That was what they said. The exact thing her aunt had wanted her to find.
“How…?” she breathed, not understanding what was happening. She reached out with trembling fingers as she quickly read through the page, the words presenting themselves plainly where they had escaped her attention before. It was all here. The knowledge she needed, wrapped up with the pleasant scent of old paper and the smooth feel of the page between her fingers as she pulled it away from the spine completely and began tearing it into tiny pieces.
“Darcy, stop!” Jon had her by her wrists but she had already torn the page in two. He grabbed the one half from her and stuffed it into his back pocket but that left her hands free to tear the other half into pieces too tiny to ever be put back together again.
“Why?” he asked her. “Darcy, look at what you’re doing!”
Her fingers were still trying to tear the pieces apart when she came back to herself. Oh, dear God, what had she done? That was the very thing they needed to do spiritual combat with the murderous Pilgrim Ghost, and she had just destroyed it.
She looked up at Jon, miserable and scared, not understanding anything that had just happened.
He jumped back from her a half step, until his back hit up against the refrigerator with a hollow rattling of the condiment bottles inside. His face drained of color.
“What is it?” she said, cold fingers of dread tickling up her spine. “What is it? Jon, what is it?”
“Your face,” was all he said.
And then she knew.
A cry of terror caught in her throat as she raced from the kitchen, through the living room and up the stairs to
where the bedrooms and the storage room and the bathroom were. It was the bathroom she needed, and she rushed in, throwing open the door so hard in her haste that it banged against the linen closet. It was a small space built in an era before huge on suites had become the fashion. The tub and the other amenities didn’t leave a lot of space for the small sink. Darcy gripped the edge of the vanity to steady herself and stared into the mirrored cabinet secured to the wall in front of her.
Her reflection stared back at her. Her face.
Only, there was someone else there with her.
There was the faint outline of another person, like their image had been taken and photoshopped over her own. A man with an angular jaw and sharp cheekbones. His hair was darker than her own. Deep pools of shadow stared at her menacingly, piercing through her hazel eyes. She knew that face hovering there around her own.
It was the same face she had seen in the book at Benson LaCroix’s house. Nathaniel Williams.
The Pilgrim Ghost.
“Get out of my body!” she blurted out. It was the first thing that came to her mind.
The next thing was an image of her own hands around Jon’s neck, squeezing and squeezing until the life had been forced out of him.
“No!” she shrieked, knowing that Jon could hear everything she was saying downstairs. “No, I won’t do that! You get out of my body. Right now!”
In the reflection, the mouth that was not hers opened wide in a cruel, inhuman laugh.
All this time she had thought it was Jon who had been possessed. Jon who had attacked her. Jon who was in danger.
She’d been wrong.
It was her.
The ghost of Nathaniel Williams had taken over her body while she slept. Even as Millie had been trying to tell her how to defend herself, the entity known as the Pilgrim Ghost had stolen into her and used her own body against her. That was why her injuries weren’t that bad. There was only so much a person could do to hurt themselves.
Her hand rose of its own accord, against her will, and slammed palm first into the mirror. Nathaniel Williams’ hand slapped against it from the other side of the reflection. She heard the glass stress under the blow, and knew if she hit much harder it would break, sharp edged slivers cutting into her flesh. The ghost smirked at her. That was what he wanted.
There were ways for a spirit to hurt someone when they had control of them. Possessing spirits had been known to kill their victims, in rare cases.
She was in a bathroom full of chemicals and sprays and razors and other common household items that could be turned deadly with the flick of a wrist.
Her right hand pulled back and slammed forward again even as she grabbed for it with her left. This time her palm stung with the force of the blow. Tiny hairline cracks appeared around her fingers.
Blood dripped from the pad of her thumb.
Darcy had to act fast to get the entity out of her. She might never have done an exorcism of another person before, with all the complicated techniques that were involved with that—the method and the way—but Darcy knew the simple method for getting a ghost out of herself. She’d only had to use it once, when she was young and stupid and invited someone into her without realizing it, but a person didn’t easily forget that sort of thing.
She heard Jon running up after her. Everything was happening so fast. Only a few seconds had passed since she’d come up here, but a few seconds was all it would take for Nathaniel Williams to end her life. She needed Jon’s help now. Right now.
“Jon!” she called down to him. She couldn’t leave the bathroom. The image in the mirror was holding her fast. Her feet felt like they had been cemented in place. “Jon, I need you to go downstairs and break the salt lines!”
His footsteps stopped halfway up the stairs. “You need me to…what now?”
Her right hand pulled back again, struggling against the grip of her left.
“I need you to break the salt lines!” she repeated. “Use a broom or your foot or your hand or whatever but break the lines! Swipe through them! As many as you can! Do it now! Do it now!”
She was screaming, and she was scared. When she had put down those salt lines she had thought she was building a wall to keep ghosts out. Checking Jon, finding nothing in him anymore, she had just assumed the ghost had left him and gone somewhere else. But, it had still been here. Right here inside of her. In putting down the salt, by building that wall, she hadn’t protected them. All she had accomplished was to box the ghost in.
With them.
Forcing the ghost out of her wouldn’t do any good if it was still trapped in the house.
Jon stumbled down the stairs with a loud thumping, and then she could hear a lot of banging down there. Hopefully he had understood her hasty directions, because she couldn’t keep her arm back anymore, and she could tell this time her hand would go straight through the mirror.
There was no more time.
Locking eyes with Nathaniel Williams there in her own reflection made her feel cold and slithery inside but she found his gaze, and held it. “There you are,” she said to him. “I see you. I feel you.”
Her hand curled into a fist, and jerked forward, then back, then forward.
It was now or never.
“Get. Out!”
She put all of her life force behind those two words, pushed from deep within herself to force anything that was not her…out. There was a heavy rush of foulness that collected right in her chest and ballooned and the pressure was terrible but she kept pushing on it and exerting her will against it until in the mirror she started to see the strain on the ghost’s face and she knew she was winning.
Nathaniel Williams opened his mouth, and screamed loud enough that Darcy heard it across the barrier between life and death. The lights in the bathroom dimmed. One of the energy efficient bulbs popped in a cloud of chemical dust.
Then the balled up mass of the entity that had taken up residence inside of her rushed away, leaving her dizzy and disoriented, stumbling backward and grabbing the shower curtain to keep from dumping herself into the tub.
The sound of the ghost’s scream dissipated like faint echoes in the distance, and it was gone.
Darcy needed to sit down. She needed to lie down, and sleep for a week, and her stomach growled so hard that she doubled over in pain around it for a moment. Self-exorcism. It took a lot out of a girl.
There was no time to stop and rest, though. She needed to know that the ghost was actually gone, and not still in the house. If Jon had done what she asked, then they were fine. There had been enough force behind that shove she’d given Nathaniel Williams’ spirit to send it half way across the spectral plains. If it wasn’t still trapped in her house.
That was a big if.
“Jon!” she called out, weakly, forcing herself to move her feet and shuffle to the stairs, holding her right hand still, her life’s blood leaking out of a dozen little tiny cuts. It wasn’t as bad as it looked, she decided. Like a bunch of paper cuts really. That was all. She could wrap it in a towel later. Right now, she needed to know if they were safe.
Struggling downstairs, leaning heavily on the railing, she found Jon waiting for her. His face was pale. His eyes were wide as he stared at her, searching her face. Darcy knew what he was looking for.
“Is he…?” he started to ask.
Darcy swallowed and nodded. “Yes. Did you break the salt lines?”
“I think so. I’ve never done this before. I scuffed my feet through the lines in front of the doors. Then I wiped away some of the salt from the windows. Is that okay? I didn’t know what you meant.”
She made it to him, and fell into his arms, loving how he held her. “That’s what I meant, Jon. Thank you. You probably saved us both.” The next part was harder for her to get out of a throat dry like desert sand. “I’m sorry. Jon, I was so sure it was you. I never thought to check myself. It was me. It was me, Jon.”
“Shh,” he comforted her, combing her hair back from her face wit
h his fingers. “It’s all right, Darcy. I know it was you. You got rid of him. You beat him. It’s over.”
“No, Jon. You don’t understand. It was me, here, in this house.”
He scrunched up his eyebrows. “Darcy, I know. It was you. You just got rid of him.”
“That’s not what I mean!” She was trembling, and she held up her right hand, the sight of the blood making her nauseous. Or, maybe that was because of what she was trying to explain to Jon. “Nathaniel Williams was in me. He was possessing me. If he was in me now…”
Then maybe it was her that had killed the woman on Helen’s lawn.
She saw in his eyes that he understood her, even though neither of them could say it out loud. He held her tighter, and stroked her back, and tried to keep his voice from being all choked up as he said, “It will be all right, Darcy. We’ll figure it out. Won’t we? That’s what we always do. We figure it out. You and me. We’ll figure this out.”
“He’s not gone,” she told him. “I didn’t get rid of him for good. Just got him out of me.”
Somehow, that fact made everything worse.
“What are you saying?” he asked her, suddenly very still against her.
“I’m saying, we didn’t stop him. I have to do the exorcism still. Oh. And we need to redo the salt trails here before his spirit gathers itself back together and comes at us again.”
“How? You destroyed that page in the book. Or, he destroyed it, I mean. All I’ve got is the last four sentences. I checked.”
She nodded against his chest, not sure if she had ever felt more scared or more safe than she did in that moment in his arms. “I tore it up to little pieces because I couldn’t stop him. But, I read it first. You brought me out of my haze long enough for me to see the page. I read every word. I know the method we need to use. Thank you, Jon. You probably saved my life.”
“Uh, no problem,” he muttered. Then again, what do you say to someone after you’ve helped them break free of a vengeful spirit?
So. She knew the method of the exorcism. Even though Nathaniel Williams had tried to keep her from it by blurring her sight and clouding her mind, she had seen it and memorized it. It was complicated but she had done harder rituals before.