Shindael disguised as Thomas.
“Does everyone see him?” Rand whispered.
No one around him said anything. They only nodded. Katie, Calvin, Dr. Clarke. Shindael had materialized for all of them. He stood only a few steps away.
Which meant he was done hiding. He was ready to fight.
And so was Rand.
“Shindael. Your time here is finished. We don’t want you here anymore, and you need to leave.”
The boy looked up at him, a knowing smirk on his face. His eyes were only two pools of black that Rand could not bear to look into.
“In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave,” Rand shouted at him.
The boy glowered. “No!”
The voice that came from him was deep and rough, not human. Rand’s entire body tensed, remembering the morgue and what the entity was capable of.
“You must do what I command of you in the name of the Lord. You are powerless against God.”
“Bullshit!” he shot back.
“Our Father, who art in heaven,” Father Calvin prayed, “hallowed be thy name.”
When removing a demonic presence, it was a good approach to have at least one person pray unceasingly. Invoking the presence of the Lord was a powerful strategy.
“Shut up, old man!”
“That’s enough, Shindael!” Rand shouted. He raised the bottle of holy water and cast it toward the demon. When it landed on Shindael, he acted as if it was acid searing into him, crying out in pain.
Then, the boy changed.
His body grew into a terrible being that stood twice the size of Rand. His head almost reached the ceiling. The face changed from that of a human to one that resembled a bat, its mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth. His ears became pointed and his skin was black and scaly.
The body morphed into some sort of reptile. Skinny arms, bent at the elbows, and disproportionally large hands with three sharp claws at the end.
The eyes were completely black.
Rand’s body told him to take a step back, told him that this creature was large enough to bite him in half and destroy the entire hospital.
“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” Calvin continued to pray. Tears streaked his cheeks as he forced himself to look at the demon—forced himself to remain faithful.
Although it was terrible to look at, Rand knew this was progress. He had gotten it to reveal its true form. No more disguises. He looked upon the real Shindael for the first time, and while his heart pounded in his chest—while his legs ached to run—he stood his ground, facing down this powerful being.
So, this is you, he thought. So large and evil, targeting a girl as young as Georgia.
As Calvin continued to pray, Rand did not let up on his commands. “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave this place!”
Again he threw holy water onto the demon, making the sign of the cross. It stumbled back, angry and sneering, acting as if it was burned by the fluid.
Rand pushed forward. “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave this place!”
Shindael shouted something back at him, but Rand could not understand. Ancient Sumerian, he assumed.
“You are not welcome here, demon,” Rand said. “Return to hell where you belong.” Rand used his hands to trace out the sign of the cross in the air, forming a barrier between him and the demon. “And we will hear from you no more. You will leave this place alone, and you will not torment the patients anymore. You will free the spirits of the children you have held here, and they will move on to the afterlife. Then, you will return to hell.”
Shindael roared at him one last time as Rand used the rest of the holy water. “Leave now! In the name of Jesus Christ, leave this place once and for all!”
Shindael fell to his knees as if punctured and deflating. Then his body morphed into a large cloud of black smoke and seemed to disintegrate into thin air.
The room fell silent. The only sound was Rand’s heart pounding in his ears.
After a few long moments, he let out the breath he’d been holding. He’s gone. Sent away. It’s over.
The lights of the ICU returned to normal. The temperature rose, melting away the icy chill the demon had brought along with it.
Rand looked around the room, searching for any trace of the lingering demonic spirit. You’re safe now, Georgia.
“Amen,” Father Calvin said behind him.
Once the place was quiet, the nurses came out from where they had holed themselves up in the patient rooms.
Katie gripped Rand’s arm.
“Rand.”
When he saw the look on her face, he frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s still here.”
“What? How can that be? We saw him leave.”
The apparition, then the dematerializing, then the vanishing. It was all by the book. That’s what happened every time he’d successfully banished the demonic.
“I don’t know, but something is off.” She looked around the room, as if waiting for the silence to speak to her. Her brow furrowed. “Something’s wrong.”
“Are you sure?”
“I always get that clear, pure feeling after we remove an entity from a place. I don’t have that now. In fact, it keeps getting worse.” Her face twisted as if the feeling was weighing down on her painfully. “Rand, we missed something—”
And then he heard a voice from inside Georgia’s room.
“Randolph Casey!”
Through the glass windows that looked into her room, they all watched as comatose Georgia Collins shot up straight in bed.
And turned her head toward them.
Her eyes were completely black, and she smiled a sharp-toothed grin that sent chills down Rand’s spine.
33
She’s possessed.
The final stage of any demonic encounter. Once inside her body, the demon could control her and cause serious harm.
“We need to restrain her!” Rand grabbed the nearest nurse and pushed him into Georgia’s room. The nurse resisted, afraid, but Rand forced him. “Now!”
A possessed person was completely controlled by the entity inside them, so it was paramount they be tied down.
The nurse found the patient restraints at the bottom of the hospital bed and deftly wrapped the first around Georgia’s left wrist. Rand watched him and started to do the same on her right, but Georgia yanked her arm away. Rand pulled it back, trying to slip the restraint onto her wrist. Georgia snapped her teeth at his hand, trying to bite him. The nurse helped straighten Georgia’s arm and they managed to tie her wrist, then fastened the restraints together below the bed.
Her body writhed and her wrists pulled against the restraints, while she glared at the nurse with her black eyes. “Let me go!” she spat with a dark voice that was not her own. The nurse froze in terror, then turned and fled.
Her face was scaly, ears pointed, taking on some of Shindael’s features.
Rand took a step back and looked at the girl. The demon turned his attention to him, staring at him through Georgia’s body.
He has her now. I thought he was gone, but…
Possession was a demon’s ultimate goal. Georgia being in a coma was the perfect opportunity. She had no control. No willpower or mindfulness to defend against it.
That was why he put her in a coma in the chapel. To prepare her for this.
Rand stared at her, helpless and crushed. He thought he’d won, but actually—
“You’ve lost, Randolph,” Shindael told him, his voice an unnerving mix between his own and Georgia’s. “The girl is mine, just like she was always meant to be.”
Not yet. I can get her back. “We’ll see about that, you son of a bitch.”
Shindael only grinned at him.
Rand went outside of Georgia’s room and closed the door, isolating the demon from the rest of the ward.
Katie looked ill. Calvin stared through the glass at the girl, face fallen.
Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. Rand felt exactly the same, but he’d run out of tears for these situations long ago.
“What is going on in here?”
Fiona Shaw stormed in. She looked around at the broken lights, confused, and her stony gaze came to rest on Rand. “How did I know you’d be here?” She crossed her arms over her chest, rubbing them with her hands, shivering.
“You knew it was me because you know what’s going on in this hospital,” Rand said.
“Please listen to him, Miss Shaw,” Calvin said. “It’s serious, and it’s real.”
“Enough,” Fiona spat at him. “I’m surprised at you, Father, that you would allow—”
“Randolph!” the demon’s horrible voice pierced through the walls.
Fiona stared at the door of 316. “Who was that?” When she went to open the door, Calvin went to stop her, but Rand only held him back.
Fiona threw open the door to Georgia’s room. Shindael growled at her through Georgia’s body, his sharp-toothed mouth open wide.
Fiona immediately slammed the door back into place, trembling. All color had drained from her skin.
“W-w-what…”
“He’s possessed her,” Rand said. “And now we need to exorcise.”
“What did I just see?” Fiona asked him. Her eyes began to fill with tears.
“You know what you saw,” Rand said. “Now please let us do our job.”
Fiona only brought her hands to her face, looking away from him. Unable to say anything else.
“This is the strongest entity I’ve ever faced, for sure,” Rand told her. “We chased him from this room, and so he went inside Georgia. She was susceptible because of the coma. But if we can expel him from her body, he’ll have nowhere left to go.”
Calvin swallowed heavily and nodded, crossing himself.
An ear-splitting roar sounded through the ward.
“RANDOLPH!”
Shindael’s voice pierced them like knives, the sound waves reverberating like they came through a hundred amplifiers. The glass in the windows of all the patient rooms shook, and then shattered, bursting into a cloud of shards. Ceiling tiles came loose and fell to the ground. Rand and the others dropped low, hands over their heads as the debris crashed down.
When everything had fallen, the only sound in the ward was Shindael’s gleeful laughter.
They stood. Tears now streamed down Fiona’s face. “What is going on? I’ve never seen anything—”
Rand grabbed Fiona by the shoulder. “I can save her. You just have to trust me. Evacuate the ICU. All of the patients. It’s not safe as long as the demon’s still here.”
She stared at him for a few moments, seeming to not comprehend. Then, she slowly nodded and pulled out her cell phone.
Rand paced nervously back and forth in the main room of the ICU, crucifix in one hand and cell phone in the other. The broken shards of glass and debris from the ceiling crunched underneath his shoes. He sent a message to Miller Landingham:
Head bat, body dragon.
Knowing a demon’s appearance was always helpful. Hopefully the man could dig up some more information on Shindael. Maybe give them a reason for why they were making no progress in banishing him. At the point, anything would be helpful.
Then Rand started praying.
“God, please be with me now. Give me the strength to cast out this demon.”
Father Calvin did the same. Rand noticed that the man could not stop trembling. That was normal, and Rand felt for the man. Time to face your fears. Time to reconcile what happened to you twenty years ago.
Patient transporters had arrived and systematically worked to roll the ICU patients from their destroyed rooms. Some of the patients were conscious while others were not, on ventilators that breathed for them, oblivious to all that was going on around them. Fiona Shaw supervised the movement while Dr. Clarke inspected each patient on his or her way out the door.
The blinds in Georgia’s room were pulled down, but since the windows were broken, they could clearly hear Shindael’s voice.
“You’ve already lost, Randolph. Ha ha ha.” A patient was pushed by Georgia’s room. “Oh, there goes Mr. Gilbert. He’s not going to make it. So sad.”
“Go,” Fiona told the transporter, and ushered him out the door.
The demon rambled on, talking to himself, taking pleasure in the sound of his own voice. “Randolph Casey, I thought I called for you.” More laughter. “Do you want to fuck little Georgia? I promise I’ll lie still for you. Ha ha ha.”
Trying to get a rise out of me, Rand thought. It was a classic ploy. Not going to work.
Calvin approached Rand. “Are you ready?”
“Yes. How about you?”
Calvin did not answer.
“You need faith,” Rand told him. “Be strong. You’ve done this before. And you were successful last time.”
Calvin looked down at his feet. “You’re right. For Georgia.”
“The patients are all gone,” Fiona said, coming up to Rand. Harold was with her.
“Good.” Then, to Harold, he said, “How are Nick and Maria?”
“Worried,” he said. “Far worse than that, actually. They heard all the commotion.”
“Do they know that Georgia…”
“No. Of course not.”
“Stay with them, please.”
Harold nodded.
“Will you three be all right in here alone?” Fiona asked.
“Yes. Now go with Harold. The next time you see us, this place will be back to normal again.”
Rand could tell Fiona wanted to believe that, but was unsure. She and Harold left, and Rand, Katie, and Calvin were the only ones who remained in the deserted, destroyed ICU.
“I’m getting lonely in here,” came the voice. “Won’t someone come and play with me?”
This was it. If Rand couldn’t cast the demon out now, then he’d lose her for good.
“Let’s kick this bastard out of here,” Rand said.
34
Miller Landingham sat on a folding chair in his back office at the bookstore, flipping channels with the remote in one hand and his take-out noodles in the other. He slurped down another pile as he thumbed the channel button.
Soon, if things kept going the way they were, he’d have to cancel the cable to the store. It was probably something he should have done a while ago, but he loved television. Strange for someone who owned and operated a used bookstore.
He passed by the news, which was on the screen just long enough for him to see BREAKING on the bottom ticker. He went back up.
The reporter stood in front of St. Mary’s. It was being evacuated.
That’s where that little girl stays. The one Rand was taking care of.
“A couple dozen ICU patients are being transferred to a nearby facility,” the woman was saying.
“And is there anymore word on the problem?” asked the man in the studio on the other half of the split screen.
“All we could get was ‘a widespread electrical malfunction.’ We assume it’s serious enough to threaten the safety of the patients.”
Behind the reporter, several ambulances and police cars were parked with their lights on.
In his gut, Miller knew this had something to do with his buddy Randolph.
“All right,” said the man on the television. “Keep us updated as the story develops.”
The female reporter disappeared off the screen as the man started talking about a celebrity scandal.
Miller’s phone beeped with a text from Rand.
Head bat, body dragon.
So Rand had finally gotten a clear glimpse of what he was dealing with.
Miller knew what it meant. In their natural form, demons often resembled combinations of real world animals.
Noodles forgotten, Miller went to his computer and opened the database he’d been building for years.
Head of a bat, body of a dragon.
Rand had mentioned the n
ame Shindael. Miller had found a few stories from those who had encountered Shindael, but none of them had ever described his appearance.
Miller ran a search for bat and dragon. A few possible candidates showed up. None of whom were named Shindael.
“It isn’t him,” Miller muttered to himself.
He searched again.
Head of bat. Body of dragon. Sick people.
It turned up nothing. He had no information on a demon of that description who particularly enjoyed preying on sick people.
“We’ve received word that upwards of thirty patients have been evacuated,” the voice on the TV said behind him. “If you’re just joining us for this breaking story, a widespread electrical malfunction at St. Mary’s Medical Center has forced the evacuation of their ICU.”
“St. Mary’s…” Miller said to himself, remembering what Rand had told him about there being hundreds of children’s spirits trapped in the ward there. He typed in a new search.
Head of bat. Body of dragon. Children.
This time he had one result.
It was a story from an internet forum he’d copied and pasted many years ago, but one he had no recollection of. It was a long block of text recounting the writer’s experience with a supernatural haunting in a home they’d just moved into.
Allegedly, they’d purchased the house in 1985 for a bargain. Once there, they’d experienced the usual occurrences that Miller was used to reading about. Missing valuables, strange bumps in the night, cold spots, feelings of dread when in certain rooms.
Then, the writer’s children complained of a monster that lived in their closet. At first, the writer explained, he thought it was just his kid having normal fears. But then the writer began catching glimpses of the creature in the periphery of his vision.
When he looked into it, he discovered that the house had been built on the site of a tragedy ten years before. A preschool had burned down, and thirteen children had perished in the fire.
Miller leaned in close to his computer screen as he read, feeling he was on to something. Burned down preschool.
The writer explained that he’d brought in a priest to bless the home and remove the negative energy, and whatever was living there had fought back. He saw it for the first time, and wrote that it looked like a mixture between a bat and a dragon or lizard. Maybe a dinosaur.
The Tenth Ward Page 18