“Do you need a glass of water?” he asked.
“No… I…” the girl muttered between her fingers, “I…don’t know what’s wrong. My head’s killing me. Can we take a break for a minute. Aspirin, maybe? Do you have aspirin?
“Just wait a few minutes, Sam!” Seth said. “Keep going Father, please. She can wait a little longer.”
Father Andrew watched Sam over the top of his book. The girl was rubbing her temples in rough circles and squinting at the floor.
“Do you need me to stop?” he asked.
Sam glared at Seth and then shook her head ‘no’ miserably. Father Andrew cleared his throat again.
“Hail Mary, full of grace. Our Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is-”
“STOP!” Sam screeched, doubling over and clutching her head. “Stop it! Every word you say feels like a damn nail being pounded into my head! Just stop!”
Father Andrew paused uncertainly.
“Sam!” Seth said, a warning in his voice.
“Oh, I don’t care what you think!” Sam raged. “Do your stupid little exorcism or whatever the hell it is, I don’t have to be here for this. I can’t take it. I’ll wait in the car!”
Sam flung Chloe’s feet off her lap and stood. Almost as quickly, she collapsed on the floor, grabbing her head and moaning. Father Andrew dropped his book and tried to help her up.
“Father!” Seth yelled.
. Seth was crouched down next to Chloe, holding her arms apart. She seemed to be straining forward, her fingers curved into claws, her eyes wide and terrified. Her lips moved, but no words came from her, and she seemed to struggle and fight against Seth’s grip. As the priest watched, she kicked her legs and twisted to the left and to the right, almost flopping off the couch. Still holding tightly to her wrists, Seth used his body to pin her flailing torso to the couch.
“Leave Sam there, something’s happening, you have to keep praying,” Seth demanded.
“This is not an exorcism,” Father Andrew protested, but his voice was unsteady.
Sam’s body snapped backwards, her head hit the carpet, and her back arched. She opened her mouth as though to scream. Father Andrew got up and stumbled backwards. This was crazy. It had to be a joke, like the old hidden camera show. Both girls twisted and flailed, almost in unison. Unbidden, an image came to his mind. A play, a play about the Salem witch trials, school girls writhing on the floor in imaginary pain, crying out, hellish play-acting.
“Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou among women,” Seth began again, watching Father Andrew with his eyebrows raised. The priest joined in, looking for a way to bring the performance to an end. He stooped and picked up the book.
“By the intercession of St. Michael and the celestial Choir of the Powers, may the Lord protect our souls against the snares and temptations of the devil. Amen.”
Sam arched her back again and screamed. On the couch, Chloe wrestled against Seth’s grip, kicking her legs, whispering something in fast inaudible words.
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” Seth and Andrew recited in unison.
“Let go, let go, please let go,” Chloe cried.
Seth winced as though in pain, but still held firm, and kept praying.
“Get it off me!” she cried. “Help, George! They found me, they’ve got me, George come back!”
“Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Hail Mary-” they continued.
Sam shook her head wildly from side to side, she shrieked again, and then froze, perfectly still, her body a contorted statue. With the eerie quality of a black and white Dracula rising from his coffin, she sat up. Turning her head with the same mechanical movement, she fixed her gaze on Father Andrew. She studied him intently, and one side of her mouth snaked upward in a cruel smile.
“Against our science, your religion is worthless!” she hissed. “Better you pray to Newton, for all the good it will do!”
Father Andrew frowned and prayed louder.
“Hail Mary full of grace, blessed art thou among women-”
“You want to believe in something real?” the harsh voice of Sam whispered at him. “I’ll show you something real! The power of the human spirit! The strength of a human will!”
“By the intercession of St. Michael and the celestial Choir of Virtues, may the Lord preserve us from evil and falling into temptation. Amen,” the priest prayed.
Sam screeched again and leapt to her feet. Chloe’s body went slack on the couch. Seth dropped her wrists and wrapped an arm around her body. Burying his face against her shoulder he prayed the Our Father with the priest.
The room felt smaller to the priest, confining and hot-- and becoming ever more so. The figure of Sam stopped her pacing and again turned toward him, her hands on her hips. She smiled, a ghastly mimicry of happiness. With the slow, determined upward curve of her lips, the room drew in around him. Air, breathable air was leaving, his lungs seemed to collapse inside his chest. He gasped, and his words faltered.
“Now…believe in this!” Sam commanded.
A full force gale of wind shrieked though the sitting room. Originating from the figure of Sam herself. The floor lamp near the couch wavered and blew over onto its side. The pages of the prayer book he held fought against his restraining fingers to rip away and flip in that wind. Inside his living room, inside his home…
And it was enough.
Father Andrew was a man who believed in the first place. Any sign, any token…it was enough. It could only strengthen a resolve he already held. Father Andrew cleared his throat. The Devil would have done better without theatrics, he would have fared almost well if he had hidden himself behind the bodies of a couple of drunk college children. Now, if Father Andrew had anything to do with it, he would face the full wrath of God!
“By the intercession of St. Michael and the celestial Choir of Principalities, may God fill our souls with a true spirit of obedience! Amen!” he called.
Sam laughed. Thump! A loud bang against the wall. Thump! Thump! Thump! The knocking sound raced across the far wall, like an invisible force behind the plaster was running along it, banging it’s fist as it went. Thump! Thump!
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come-”
Thump! Thump! Thump! Sam laughed hysterically, clutching her sides. Nearby, Chloe groaned and, breaking free of Seth, began clawing and slapping at her legs. Seth for his part, struggled to regain his grip on her wrists. He didn’t seem to notice the hurricane winds, or the demonic knocking on the walls. His focus rested solely on the girl whose body was trying to twist off the couch. Whatever the girl was experiencing, her face a perfect mask of fear now, was mirrored in his own, his voice breaking as he recited the Hail Mary, yet again. Finally, he caught her wrists. He held her back down, wincing at every cry she made, though never failing to recite the words.
“By the intercession of St. Michael and the celestial Choir of Archangels may the
Lord give us perseverance in faith and in all good works in order that we may attain the
glory of Heaven. Amen.” Father Andrew intoned.
Sam gasped, and leering, she took a step nearer to the priest.
“Man of Faith…” her voice a stage whisper that carried throughout the room. “Do you not think it strange that He would let such things pass? Couldn’t he stop this with one thought, one nod of his all-knowing head? Can you not see that science is the answer to his silence? Can you not see that the spinning of the cosmos into being from the force of a bang is just as beautiful as your storybook words of a garden? Can you not see that the cosmos is the garden? That a force without self-awareness is your God? Can’t
you see? You want to live forever? You think the reward for blind faith is heaven? The only thing your people got right was purgatory!”
The knocking was louder now. It ran up and down the walls, all around…dozens of invisible hands…knocking…banging. Thump. Thump. Thump. Tink. Tink. Tink. The knocking flashed up and down the window.
Father Andrew shook his head. The devil had never been more off target in his memory than now. These were adolescent threats. This was weak, unworthy of the advisory he had always envisioned. But then…maybe it wasn’t directed at him.
“By the intercession of St. Michael and the celestial Choir of Angels may the Lord grant us to be protected by them in this mortal life and conducted in the life to come to Heaven. Amen.,” he prayed.
Tink…Tink…Bang…Bang…Bang…
The window seemed to bow inward with the unseen pressure of the force banging on it. And then…it didn’t just seem to…it actually did. The window curved into the room. Once…twice…and shattered, spraying glass fragments more than a dozen feet forward. Seth covered Chloe’s body with his own. It was a needless sacrifice. The shards didn’t go anywhere. They hovered. They levitated, spinning in the air at different points, tracing the path of whatever had broken through the window. The wind came from outside now. It howled through the empty frame, spinning the tiny, jagged barbs of sparkling debris where they floated, defying gravity. As they prayed, the wreckage slowly converged, forming a sphere, a mirror ball of reflecting lights.
“Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou among women,” Father Andrew prayed, watching the jagged glass ball that watched him back, with a thousand of his own eyes.
While they prayed the Hail Mary, three times, the ball elongated. An oval first, and then an oval with two growing appendages, leaking away from the bottom. Sam collapsed on the floor, A dropped puppet, white-faced…a discarded doll. The ball grew two more elongated lines. It was a ball no longer, it was a torso, one with growing arms and legs, and then the glass shard ball of a head rose from the chest. A body…a glass shard body, and it took one step and then another towards the priest. And how the wind howled then, how it blew and whistled around the unholy figure. The glass man and the priest.
“O glorious prince St. Michael, chief and commander of the heavenly hosts, guardian of souls, vanquisher of rebel spirits, servant in the house of the Divine King and our admirable conductor, you who shine with excellence and superhuman virtue deliver us from all evil, who turn to you with confidence and enable us by your gracious protection to serve God more and more faithfully every day,” Father Andrew prayed, setting his book gently aside and facing the glass man.
The horrid apparition took another step, and then another. It stretched out one hand towards the priest, a thousand jagged points threatening in it’s gesture. Father Andrew didn’t flinch.
“Pray for us, O glorious St. Michael, Prince of the Church of Jesus Christ, that we may be made worthy of His promises. Almighty and Everlasting God, Who, by a prodigy of goodness and a merciful desire for the salvation of all men, has appointed the most glorious Archangel St. Michael Prince of Your Church, make us worthy, we ask You, to be delivered from all our enemies, that none of them may harass us at the hour of death, but that we may be conducted by him into Your Presence. This we ask through the merits of Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen!”
The glass man took one more step, it’s barely formed fingers faltering towards the priest’s immoveable face.
And then it crashed.
With that one last step, the force animating the spiky ruins seemed to melt instantly into the floor. As it went, the glass fragments rained down. A waterfall of sparkling sharpened threats, hitting the carpet with the force of a downpour. The wind ceased, and the boy spoke. Crouched down next to the limp body of the girl on the couch, cradling her head in his large hands, his lips close to her ear, he was whispering.
“Come back, Clo. Come back to me. I’ll fight next to St. Michael or anything else that’ll keep you safe. You and me, Kiddo. You and me, I’m right here next to you. I have been right along…I always will be.”
* * *
Chloe felt like she was losing herself. What was it George said? Something about the soul popping out of a body and spreading, dissipating into nothingness. Right now she was spreading. All inside of her was black, the scene from the strange, dimly lit room was a tiny picture. So far away it couldn’t be reached. Whatever strange molecules made her up were quickly leaking away into the dark.
“Oh, no, oh no, oh no, please stop,” she begged herself.
The one thing that reminded her of being, of shape, was the strange, penetratingly, cruel squeeze of the Thing, on what was once her legs.
In her fear of nonexistence, Chloe ceased to be afraid of the thing. It was, at the very least, a point, a feeling, an experience that gave her a concept of pinpointed terror. An experience she could identify as her own.
This is me, it’s trying to hurt me, I am afraid of it, she reminded herself. The room came back into focus. And so did the grip of the Thing.
“It’s not real,” the dreamed up words echoed around her.
“If it’s not real…I’m not real,” she decided quickly. “Very well, it IS real.”
The thing squeezed tighter, her ‘somewhat’ knees bent inward.
“Why does it always have to be fear that I can believe in? Monsters in the dark? Pain…rejection?” her own thoughts chastised her. “There has to be a REAL good too, doesn’t there? For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. For every evil a good, for every negative…a positive. If that wasn’t so, by the laws of physics, the world should go spinning off it’s axis and crash into the sun, shouldn’t it?”
The thing dug it’s mostly real nails, into her mostly real legs.
Pain…fear…it reminded her.
It didn’t really matter, did it? What was she really? What was one human being?
“Everything!” shot back the dark hurting Thing, forgetting it’s purpose in the fervor of it’s belief. “Why it’s everything! The individual is stronger than death itself! We are all God! We are all a meaning! Every soul a flame, not put out in the dark, the strong continue to burn. We don’t need something greater, some beneficent force to meld us into one, to take us back into itself. There is nothing more than this. One flame, two flames, three flames…they start a fire in the dark, they burn and burn and burn. The fire is us, the ones who aren’t fooled.”
“Not addition,” Chloe argued vaguely. “There was this thing. This other thing. It was love. It was more than a human. It was more even than the dark. Back where there were bodies, where there was snow that fell out of the clouds and leaves that changed color. They fell too. Everything fell there. Everything changed there. Changed? No. It went round and round in a circle…a cycle. All these molecules…things that went around so quickly, like the second hand of the clock. Bodies…tiny cells thrust forth from the ripest fruits of strange combinations of random molecules. Springing out, open-mouth…wailing. Suckle…grow…learn…grow…reach…grow…walk…grow… love. Love from the moment eyes touch human form. Learn…grow…love the body that divided, that shed the naked creature into being…and from that love, greater love. Love for all that resembles it’s own form. Unless it’s thwarted. Unless it’s stopped. A sapling plucked, a limb, twisting round any obstruction to reach any ray of light it can. Oh, but if it grows! If it grows in the full light, in the full breeze and rain, it sees beyond the molecules, it sees beyond the world of forms. It sees and it continues to grow. And that continued growth…it’s the learning of greater love. Isn’t it? It grows towards love. Passing through the cycle of seasons. Rains fall, leaves fall, snows fall, and it reaches up and up and up, becomes higher…higher… Oh my God…there is something more, isn’t there?
“NOTHING MORE!” the dark Thing screamed. “Nothing and no one and no great thing! You reach, you strive and the higher you grow…the farther down the fall. Come down or you fall and break! You brea
k to nothing, to nonexistence!
“And then love for that outside it’s form. Love for more than can be explained, that can be defined by those stupid molecules. Something outside of science and what it can discover. Love for all that created all, Love for oneself, love for the greater that eclipses self. Oh, I’m so close…I’m so close. There’s some center, and that concept of self is a spoke supporting that wheel, that cycle that keeps on turning. Leaves fall, snow falls, buds swell, flowers burst, and I’m somewhere. I’m somewhere in it, in all of it, aren’t I though? I love you for this.”
Her form would have wept, would have knelt, on knees that the Dark wildly and feebly tried to shred.
“YOU IMAGINE LOVE!” It screamed. “You want so badly to believe that you are part of it, as an individual! That your concept of self can remain intact, through all of eternity. I give you that! Child, there is no God! Look to yourself! Look to your hands, to your thoughts, to your own imagination! You are God! You are all there is, all there ever was, all there ever will be!”
“No,” she laughed, swelling. The empty space no longer terrifying, there was not enough space, no mammoth enough a volume for HER to be contained by it.
“And what do you know of love?” it whispered in death throes. “What do you imagine it truly is? You think you know love? When did your worthless body experience it? You imagine the insights of glorified nothing. You have no experience to ground it.”
And then came shrinking. The air whizzing out of the hole in an inflated theory.
‘What love, what love, what love?’ it cried as it hissed away from her.
“No,” she said calmly, no longer addressing the dark thing, but the thoughts that kept her tied to that dark place. “Oh no, come now. Was there not always love? Seth was such a dogged example of love for no sensible human reason.”
“Was HE?” the Dark thing laughed, puffing itself larger. “Was he? I watched! I needled and pushed and he danced to my tune! Was he all you knew of love? He kissed the other one you ‘loved’ the Sam one. He threw those energies he had for you to those annihilating winds, the one humans break against again and again, the ones that issue forth from those single human souls. The only breeze that stirs these darker regions, the alter of self-importance, or single-minded bodily desires. Eat, sleep, breed, consume, want. The outline of what make us human! His love, hahaha, it is as any programmed response of the body. His love is his need to make more life. To make his body feel good, to be, to-”
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