by Hunter Shea
She’d promised him worse if he tried to run and read scripture to him nightly. Chastity was a strong woman and her family, a band of ruthless Pentecostals teeming with their brand of hellfire and unearthly devotion to the Lord, practically ran the town. The chances of his making out were slim to none.
He’d even caught her whispering the ten commandments over and over again into his ear when she thought he was asleep. Yes, he had once been a sinner, but that was long ago, before he met Chastity. He wished mightily he could return to that life. It was far safer. The booze, unclean woman at truck stops, barroom fights, they had nothing on the wrath of his Chastity.
She’d even added her own rule to those handed down to bearded Moses on the Mount. “And don’t forget the most important commandment of all, number eleven. Thou shalt not make Chastity angry.”
A couple of years later, she’d pierced his eyes with a ballpoint pen when she thought he was looking too lasciviously at a woman on a TV show, leaving him a blind mute. That agony had been almost too much to bear and the ensuing infection nearly took his life.
But Chastity, his guardian angel she called herself, had nursed him back to health, physically and spiritually. Oh, she lamented every day that he was useless to her when it came to working the land, but at least he was right with the Lord.
His hearing was his sole portal to the outside world. Most days, basking in the symphony of even the most minute sounds around him was the only validation that he was still alive.
Without it, he would go insane.
And now this. Tied up to a chair in their basement, his heart bashing its way through his ribs, his pants moist from the gallon of pee he’d unleashed several times with nary a hint of shame.
Why did there have to be a woman on the other end of the phone? He couldn’t even remember what she was trying to sell. Any reply he would have given her would just have been an unintelligible grunt.
Was it force of habit? Or had he simply been desperate to hear another human voice, something other than the scolding tones of his sick, misguided wife.
He’d realized his mistake the moment the phone had touched his ear. He heard Chastity round the corner and could feel the twin jets of flame that spurted from her eyes directly to his soul. He ran, but without his walking stick, he only made it as far as the kitchen. He crashed into the sink and slunk to the floor, his head resting in an open cabinet.
Then came the wrestling. He fought her like a gator, thrashing and whipping for his life. A couple of times, he succeeded in getting her off his back, but each time he struggled to get to the door, she pounced right back on him.
Obviously, she won the battle. He wasn’t sure if he could beat her even if he had his eyesight. Damn wife was more bull than woman.
The thought made him laugh. His chest heaved as he became unhinged.
“Sit still, Norm. I haven’t got all day. Don’t make me have to heat this needle up again. Don’t know what the heck you find so funny about all this.”
She moved to his right and he felt her hands on his head. He heard the sound of the needle as it inched down his ear canal, softly brushing against his skin.
Sobbing, he cried out, “Nngoo! Nngoo!”
His eardrum popped and he winced as the right side of his head thrummed as if it had been hit with a hammer.
Working quickly, Chastity moved to his left and jammed the needle unceremoniously into his other ear. There was a tearing sound at first, a loud pop, then silence.
He could no longer hear his own gurgling protests or Chastity’s admonishments as she ripped the tape from his hands. Norm dropped to the floor, deaf to the sound of his nose as it broke against the hard packed earth.
Norm was alone now, trapped in eternal darkness, endless silence.
He wept into the empty void, lost in a dark sea of muted madness.
The cement felt cold against his cheek. He felt the vibration of her feet as she stomped to the steps and back into the kitchen.
Norm smiled.
He hoped she didn’t notice the Drano he’d put in her coffee mug during their tussle. At least he thought it was Drano. The bottle felt right in his hands.
Please, dear God, just give me this.
Yeah, the big man owed him that. He fell asleep dreaming about Chastity’s last cup of joe, hoping he’d be awake to feel the thud when her body hit the floor.
I belong to a collective of wonderful writers known as the Pen of the Damned. I never cease to be amazed by the sheer poetry of their work, even if its seeped with blood and revenge and dark needs. We post new stories on the website, www.penofthedamned.com on a rotating basis. When it was my turn over a year ago, I decided I wanted to try my hand at a pure gothic horror story. I’d never done it before, but the old ghothics are my favorite to read. The story became so big, we had to post it in installments throughout the year. Because of me, they had to institute a rule to keep it short. No more installments, and that means you, Hunter! So, here’s my first, and so far only attempt at a real gothic yarn. If you have trouble sleeping tonight, I know I’ve done my job.
MERCY
They say the Old Manse rests on consecrated ground, but we know different now. When evil comes, it does so without warning, without provocation, and without a care of the sacredness or sanctity of one’s home.
The devil lives among us. In fact, it sleeps in the parlor beneath my bed, the one I shared with my older sister, Jessamine, until four weeks ago. It festers within her frail body, a host that grows weaker with each passing day, so weak that I wonder how much more my poor sister can endure.
A week ago, I heard Father mention a word I’d never heard in my studies before.
Exorcism.
Reverend Newton claims Jessamine is possessed by an evil spirit. It’s the only thing that can explain the physical change in her body, the mad gibberish she spits at us unabated, the fantastic feats she performs at will. Just yesterday, I watched her rise from the settee as if she were the weight of a cloud. It took Mother and Father to pull her down from the ceiling.
Oh, the terrible things it/she said to Father. The awful epithets it/she hurled at Mother.
The worst is saved for the Reverend. How the demon in Jessamine despises him.
The good Reverend arrived four days ago. Most of his time has been spent at her bedside, reading scripture, sometimes shouting, other times issuing commands in a soft though unyielding voice.
My sister’s exorcism is in its fourth day. It feels and looks, as if we all aged twenty years. Mother’s hair looks whiter, and the weariness of Father’s eyes along with his sunken cheeks gives him the countenance of a much older, decimated man.
Tonight is to be the last night. Either Jessamine will die or the Reverend will perish from the struggle between God and the Fallen One. I know in my heart of hearts that neither can persevere another day.
I was ordered to stay out of the parlor, but I can’t leave my sister’s side. I watch in mute horror as her body contorts and strange, terrifying sounds spew from her chapped, raw lips.
A hailstorm, wild and white with gale winds that batter the glass windows of the Old Manse, howls in unison with the demon that has lodged itself within Jessamine’s throat. She is so pale. Her body is awash with sweat and blood, yet she shivers as if immersed in an icy lake.
“Child, the Reverand’s Bible!” my father shouts at me.
My heart hitches in my chest and I freeze.
It takes everyone in the room, Father, Mother, Reverand Newton and Esther, our charwoman, who is as strong as ten horses, to contain my teenage sister’s writhing body. The popping of Jessamine’s shoulders and hips bring a wave of nausea to my already tormented belly.
“Mercy! The book!”
My mother’s panicked voice breaks me from my stupor.
Jessamine had smacked the book out of Reverand Newton’s hand when he tried to place its binding against her flushed, creased forehead. I find it under the chair and run to him.
Using
his free hand to press down on my sister’s chest, he opens the book to a page with a red felt bookmark and begins to read.
“Submit yourselves to God! Resist the devil, and he will flee from you!”
Jessamine roars, an inhuman wail that sounds like a menagerie of beasts in agony.
I step back, stifling my tears. I squeeze my doll, my only source of comfort, tight against my breast.
“We’re almost there,” the Reverand says to my father.
Jessamine’s eyes roll to the back of her head and her body goes limp.
The Reverend continues, “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up!”
A hailstone the size of a man’s fist crashes through the window. The angry wind pursues, billowing out the heavy, maroon drapes. All of the candles snuff out and we plunge into darkness.
I scream. I know I’m supposed to be strong and brave for my tormented sister, but out it comes anyway, a scream from the pit of my soul that won’t stop until my throat is torn to pieces. I want it to cease! I can’t bear another moment under this roof, wrestling with the devil that has taken hold of my dear, loving Jessamine.
Through my screams of terror, there is no way to know that all had grown deathly still.
A pair of cold hands place themselves on either side of my face.
“Mercy, please, it’s all right,” a voice hushes. Stale breath brushes across my face.
Reluctantly, I open my eyes, and my spirit soars.
“Jessamine!”
I throw my arms around my frail sister and we go crashing to the floor.
“Be careful,” mother admonishes.
“You’re back! You’re really back!” I cry, gazing into her clear, exhausted eyes.
A stream of tears flows down her cheeks and she kisses the top of my head. “I am,” she replies. “And just in time, I see. You dropped Lucy.”
She hands my doll to me and I notice the crack in her once perfect, porcelain head. It runs from the corner of her right eyebrow to her painted hairline. Normally, such a tragedy would devastate me, but on this day, it was a pittance.
My sister had returned!
Jessamine slept often, those first few days after her return. I was allowed to take her to the garden for one hour each day, where I read poetry to her and piled dozens of fresh picked flowers on her lap. The storm had laid waste to our vegetable garden, but the heartier flowers that lined the old house were spared its wrath.
“Do you remember how it felt when…” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the question. Father had told me to never mention the word exorcism again, especially in front of Jessamine.
She shook her head. “I don’t remember a thing. It just felt as if I’d disappeared, like sleeping without dreaming.”
“Please don’t go away again.”
“I promise, I won’t. Big sisters are supposed to take care of their little sisters, not the other way around. Thank heavens you had Lucy to watch over you while I was…gone.” She cradled Lucy in her hands, smoothing her thumb over the tiny fracture.
I had to say something that had puzzled me ever since her possession. “You’d think living in the Reverend’s house would have prevented something like this from happening. I mean, this is sacred ground of sorts. ”
Jessamine stares at the old stone manse, at its tall windows and gabled roof. Her eyes glaze over as if with fever. Her lips were dry and cracked and her voice was soft and distant when she replied, “Yes, you would think so.”
Despite father’s insistence that we put Jessamine’s episode behind us, lest we give the evil the power to creep back into our lives, it was hard for me to stay silent. There was so much I wanted to say, to learn, to really know.
I lay in my bed letting the questions twist round my brain. The moon was full and brilliant and cast silvery shafts of diaphaneity across our small bedroom.
How did the evil worm its way into Jessamine?
Why her?
Where did it go?
How did it go? Was it simply a matter of saying the right words by the Reverend, or was it something more, something that couldn’t be seen or heard? What was the alchemy at work in our home?
“I’m sure it’s in hell, where it belongs,” my sister blurted from her sleep. It was if she had read my thoughts!
It gave me a terrible fright. I touched her lightly on the shoulder but her heavy exhalation told me she was in a deep state of sleep.
The house took on a preternatural silence and the radiance of the moon no longer seemed so gay. Sleep did not come easily.
I was awakened by Esther’s piercing scream. Jessamine and I threw off our blankets and rushed down the stairs.
Esther was still in her night clothes. A wide, dark streak of blood marked the trail of her pained walk from her room by the kitchen to the dining room.
She reached out to us with shaking hands. “Help…me!”
It was awful. Her round face was red with strain and rivers of tears flowed from the corners of her eyes. Our charwoman had always been a source of invincibility in our home. She lay upon the floor like a helpless rabbit caught in a trap. Her leg was a mass of gore. With trembling hands she tried to stanch the flow of blood.
My father brushed past us and knelt by her side. He asked her how she had come to be hurt but poor Esther could only babble. The house was awash with all our cries.
Mother had been given a prescription of laudanum to help her frayed nerves after Jessamine’s episode. She remained oblivious to the commotion.
“Jessamine, fetch me that cloth over there,” Father said.
When he turned to ask for her help, I saw the red, pulpy swath that had been carved into Esther’s leg. The edges of the wound were ragged, as if…
As if something had gnawed the flesh from her leg.
Esther’s moans died in her throat when she passed out. I ran to the well to fill a basin with water.
The doctor arrived an hour later. He took Esther with him to the hospital. She awoke when Father and he lifted her from the floor, screaming like a madwoman all the way to the doctor’s carriage.
None of us ate that day. We couldn’t get the image of her gnawed-upon leg out of our brains.
“Father, what could do such a thing to Esther?” I asked. “Could it have been a wolf?”
He shook his head and smoothed the sides of his great, bushy mustache. “I’m not sure dear. Esther was in no state to tell us. Perhaps when she settles down at hospital, she’ll recall. I’d say it had to have been some animal she encountered in the yard. I want you girls to pray for her recovery and that it wasn’t…rabid.”
When mother awoke in the early afternoon, she shuffled throughout the house, calling for Esther, wondering about supper.
It seemed we couldn’t escape the madness.
Father had to go to Royal Tunbridge Wells on business, and said he would be back in a week’s time. We so wished he would stay, but daren’t ask that of him. He was an important man, and his business kept us in a lifestyle that others envied.
Esther remained in hospital. Her condition had gown dire as infection spread from one leg to the other. Blood poisoning, they called it. No one knew what had done such a thing to her. She still hadn’t been able to speak of that morning. It must have been an animal, perhaps a sick wolf that had come round our house. It was the only theory that made sense.
Mother had been sedated to the point where she was nothing more than a slip of a phantom, drifting throughout the Old Manse at odd hours. Most days, she didn’t even recognize us. Her occasional jabberings as she roamed the dark house at night chilled me to the bone. My mother had become the shambling embodiment of my nightmares.
Jessamine and I did the cooking and cleaning while Father was away, and made sure Mother didn’t waste away to nothing in between doses of laudanum.
I was bringing up a tray of broth, brown bread and co
ld chicken when Jessamine shouted from Mother’s room.
“Mercy, come quick!”
Placing the tray on the floor, I ran to the room. Jessamine stood by Mother’s bed, her mouth agape. Mother slept, unaware of our intrusion.
“Blood!” I exclaimed.
Streams of crimson stained the crisp, white sheets.
“Look!” Jessamine said, pointing at mother’s left hand.
Good God!
Mother’s ring finger was gone. A nub of yellow bone peeked out of the gore that remained of her finger. There was no trace of the finger itself; only the bloody show left in its leaving’s wake.
“What…what happened?” I said. My vision began to tilt and I felt ready to fall. Jessamine’s firm grip on my arm kept me upright.
“I don’t know. It looks like most of the bleeding has stopped. Here, press the sheet against it while I go get Dr. Fenimore”
Even though it was Mother on the bed, wounded yet serene, the thought of touching that space where her finger used to be brought a wave of revulsion that threatened to spill from my mouth. I recoiled.
Jessamine was insistent. “I know what you’re feeling, but you must do what I say. I’ll return with the doctor before you know it.”
Before I could protest, she was down the stairs and out the door. I heard the clatter of our mare’s hooves pound upon the path to the Old Manse. Mother slept on while I prayed, my trembling hand doing its best to keep pressure on the nub. I looked longingly at my room across the hall, wishing I had Lucy under my arm to comfort me.
“And you didn’t see or hear anything?” Dr. Fenimore asked. His bulbous, veiny nose twitched when he spoke.
“Nothing,” Jessamine answered. “I was right next door, reading, and Mercy was downstairs preparing supper for mother.”