by Karina Halle
My eyes closed eventually, shutting out the light, and my mind began to twirl, taking my thoughts and body into a lazy, limp journey into sleep. I was halfway there when something roused my eyes open.
I held my breath in my mouth and listened past the loud beating of my heart.
Silence.
Then…
There. Above my head. A thump coming from the roof.
I slowly turned my head so I was facing up, my eyes flying around the empty space above.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Something was definitely up there. Something was walking on the roof.
I had no choice. I grabbed the extra pillow beside me and covered my head with it, shutting out the noise and the light. There wasn’t much else I could do but ignore the horror before it took over completely. This time sleep would be my only escape.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The countdown till Wednesday night went excruciatingly slow. Ada was away at school during the day and I was still on hiatus from work, even though I was starting to feel increasingly guilty about it. I hated taking advantage of the time off but I knew there was no way I’d be a reliable employee until after the cleanse, when everything would be under control. It felt like my life was on hold until then.
Fortunately, all supernatural activity around me had slowed down. Maybe Abby (or whoever/whatever it was) knew what was coming and was scared off. Or maybe she was just conserving her energy and gearing up for a showdown. Either way, the random thumps coming from the roof was the last peculiar thing that had happened and things were looking brighter. Literally. It was like my eyes were so used to seeing shadows everywhere that everything looked fresh and clean for once.
I hadn’t talked to Maximus much and I just put my faith into whatever he was arranging, though I have to say I was a bit wary when he called me late Tuesday and asked me to do a peculiar task.
“You want me to what?” I repeated into my phone.
“Get hair and nail clippings from your parents.”
I was sitting on the couch watching the news with them. My face furrowed with disgust but they were paying me no attention.
“How...and, good God, Maximus, why?” I whispered.
“I know it sounds goofy but it is part of the banishing ritual. Just be glad you’re not charged with the task of finding dragon’s blood oil.”
“Dragon’s blood?”
At that both my parents tore their eyes away from the screen and gave me a funny look. I smiled at them weakly and excused myself to my room.
“It’s all over the place in Louisiana but I’m having a hard time finding it here.”
“I’m going to assume it’s a lot more normal than it sounds,” I said as I climbed the stairs. I paused in the hallway and with a quick peek down the stairs I quickly and quietly made my way to my parents’ bedroom and into their large, yellow bathroom with enough light to show every pore on your face.
“And so what am I supposed to do with the…parent particles?” I asked him as my eyes roamed across the counter. I spied my mom’s hairbrush and found my dad’s in one of the drawers.
“Find a glass bottle, plastic might do, and put them in there.”
I picked up a pair of tweezers and removed the hair, holding it away from me. It was funny how hair was lovely to look at and touch when it was on your head, but the minute it was off your head it was as gross as anything.
“Mmm, you probably should have told me that before I started this,” I said with a grimace. “Where on earth I am going to get nail clippings from?”
“I guess it’s not crucial from them. The hair will do. But we’ll need the same, plus the clippings from you and Ada. And me.”
“Is there a book telling you to do this?” I quickly shut off the bathroom light and soundlessly scampered back to my room before I was caught, hair still in my hand.
“I’m certainly not making it up off the top of my head,” he answered. “Do you have a bell?”
“A bell?” A recalled sound of the bell from my dreams echoed in my mind.
“Yes. You know. Ring-a-ding, darling.”
“I know what a bell is. Why do we need one?”
“Why do we need holy water? We just do. If you can’t find one they said we can substitute with an iPod.”
I laughed. “So we need holy water and dragon’s blood, but if a friggin’ bell is hard to find, well then we can just use an iPod.”
“That’s the way it is.”
“I guess so.”
“See you tomorrow, Perry. Get a good sleep.”
“Good luck with the dragon. You’ll probably need a really large needle,” I told him and hung up.
The next evening Ada and I were sitting in my room and flipping through the book on demonology plus a few she checked out herself from the school library. They were mainly witchcraft books, nothing too serious for a public school, but it was nice to know she was taking this as seriously as the rest of us.
“Holy hell,” she said as she paused on a certain page.
“Ada,” I warned, feeling extra touchy about mentions of anything holy. I peered at the book. It was a really old, detailed black and white drawing of some pretty despicable creatures in revolting positions. The fact that I was viewing the artwork upside down and it still made sense spoke volumes about the depravity.
She looked up at me with a pained face. “These artists were fucked.”
“It’s what they believed,” I said.
“Could you imagine if it’s what they saw?”
It was my turn to look pained. “I don’t want to think about it.”
She watched me carefully with her big blue eyes. Finally, she said, “Do you think this is what’s going on with you? I mean, really?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maximus doesn’t seem to think so. In fact, he says it’s rarely the case and if this was somehow…demon-related…we would definitely know about it. I mean, look at everything that has been happening. It seems to be a ghost and it seems to be centered around me. Aside from the pig, it’s always been about me.”
“And yet you got this book out.”
I looked down at my nails. The coral polish was all chipped off and they looked normal again. “I just have a funny feeling. Down here.” I put my hand on my gut. Then I put it to my head. “And here.”
She nodded attentively. “I think you’re awesome for trusting your instincts. You’ll probably be wrong. But I don’t think being extra careful will be a bad thing.”
I remembered Maximus’s warnings about the dangerousness of doing exorcisms to people who weren’t possessed. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Soon my parents were at my door, coming in just as Ada hid the books underneath the pillow. They looked nice and fancy. My dad was actually wearing a suit, even though the navy jacket was stretched too tightly against his ever-burgeoning belly, and my mom was flawless as usual in a lavender shift dress and black pearls.
“Ada, you need to leave your sister alone,” my mom chided her. “Go on, shoo.”
“I’m being picked up by Rachel in ten minutes,” she lied with a toothy smile.
“All right,” mom said to her, then focused her pale eyes on me. “Have a good time, Perry. Don’t burn down the kitchen. Whatever you do.”
“And no funny business,” my dad said sternly, to which my mother smacked him on the arm. “What, you said it first.”
They left the room, with my mother calling out, “We’ll let you know when we’re on our way back. Nine-thirty at the very latest!”
After they left and we were safe, I looked at Ada. With Maximus arriving at 6:30, it didn’t give me as much time as I hoped.
“I hope they don’t come home when we’re in the middle of it, cuz that would be awkward.”
“Then your ginger boy better know how to do a quick cleansing…” she said wryly.
I had a feeling that he wasn’t sure how to even do a cleansing in gener
al. Oh well, there was no point in dwelling on it. We were all green when it came to this side of things and had no choice but to wing it.
At 6:30 Maximus came rolling into the driveway in his snazzy truck, coming up to the front door armed with a dozen bags. The scratches on his face were somehow uglier and clotted black red.
“Do we need all this stuff?” I asked as I opened the door and welcomed him in.
“Unfortunately,” he said, and stooped down to give me a quick peck on the cheek. He looked behind me at Ada, who was giving him the staredown.
“Ew, what happened to your face!” she said.
He smiled and stroked his cheek fondly. “Wildcat.”
I blushed, then shot her a look of my own, internally warning her to behave, and a wave of resignation flooded her face.
“Oh. Well, we’re glad you could make it,” she said with reluctance.
“Why thank you, blondie,” he said. He held out one of the bags for her.
“You can be in charge of the cleansing material.”
She took it hesitantly and peeked inside while he turned to me. “Do you have the Witch Bottle? Have you created a permanent home for it yet?”
“Say what?” Ada said, but I understood what he was asking. I quickly ran up the stairs to my room to fetch the bottle from my nightstand. As he had asked, it was a glass bottle and the hair from my family members’ heads, plus mine and Ada’s nail clippings were resting at the bottom. It looked like a gruesome rat’s nest of black and blonde hair.
I brought it back down to the kitchen where they now were, lifting items out of the bags and spreading it out on the island countertop.
“Here you go,” I said, handing it to him. We all winced at the bottle in unison.
“Lovely,” he said. “And the home?”
I told him I dug a hole in the back yard where we could bury it and no one would be the wiser, unless my parents decided to put in an in-ground pool one day.
“Yeah right, a pool. Dad’s salary ain’t what it used to be,” Ada said under her breath.
Nothing’s as it used to be, I thought.
We looked out at everything displayed before us. There was a small brass bell, the Witch Bottle, two unmarked glass vials filled with clear liquid (which I assumed was holy water), a box of salt, two small bowls, packets of red and saffron-colored spices, a small bottle of crimson oil and a black candle and a white candle.
“You’re going to do some show and tell with us first, right?” I asked.
Maximus smiled and walked over to the broom closet. He emerged with a broom, which he handed to me, and a mop, which he handed to Ada.
“I will. But first we have to clean the house from top to bottom.”
“Perry! You promised me there wouldn’t be any manual labor!” Ada cried out, staring down at the mop in horror.
“I didn’t know!” I shot back and looked at Maximus for an explanation.
“We have to make sure all the affected areas are clean before we do this,” he said calmly. “Dust and dirt hold a lot of negative energy.”
“Oh, please,” Ada said.
“Hey, I don’t make the rules,” Maximus said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “And I’m not getting off any easier either. I’ll be dusting.”
I eyed the clock. We were going to have to clean in a hurry.
We started with the first floor before we made our way through the house together with Maximus dusting hard-to-reach areas, followed by me with a broom and a garbage bag and Ada with the mop and a bucket. Our house wasn’t a mansion by any means, but it was quite large and there were an awful lot of nooks and crannies. It took almost an hour for us to do the whole house. My parents were definitely going to think something was up when they came back to a sparkling clean home, but I was hoping that by then it wouldn’t matter what we told them – our problems would be over.
When we finished, we gathered back in the kitchen, which Maximus deemed as the heart of the home (and probably why the pig carcass was originally hidden there). He organized all of our special items on top of my mother’s navy blue dish cloth so it resembled an Ikea altar of sorts. Then he brought out a pair of nail clippers and small scissors from the front pocket of his black shirt, clipped his nails, had me snip a small chunk of hair from the back of his pompadour do, then he stuck it in the bottle with the rest of our offerings and deftly sealed it with duct tape.
“Now,” he said, lifting up the container of salt, “we purify.”
He walked out of the kitchen and to the front door. Ada and I followed him, staying a few feet back, unsure of what he was going to do.
He stooped down and shook a thick line of salt across the path of the door.
“Purifying salt,” he said in a loud, booming voice that seemed to echo off the ceiling and walls, “allow positive energy in and negative energy out. Allow all unwanted energy and entities to leave this house, never to return.”
Part of me wanted to laugh because what he was saying was just so Harry Potter/hocus pocus that it sounded ridiculous. The other part of me felt a tug of trepidation, like there was actual power in the words.
Ada moved an inch closer to me. Evidently, she felt it too.
He got up and smiled faintly at us. “Now we go around the house, clockwise, and do the same at every door that leads outside.”
Ada and I exchanged looks but we walked down the hall to the French doors at the back patio. When we finished with that door, we went to the one at the garage and Maximus repeated himself.
“I’m glad you didn’t use our salt,” I whispered, feeling like my voice should be kept to a minimum. “My mother would have wondered what I was cooking.”
“She’d probably think you accidently used salt for sugar, like that pie you made,” Ada snickered and I joined in, embarrassed at one of my first attempts at baking.
“Ladies,” Maximus said sharply. We looked at him in surprise. I’d never heard him take that tone before and it shut both of us up. “My apologies, but you’re going to have to start taking this seriously. Perry? This means you. This is your ghost. If you aren’t one hundred percent committed and believing in this, then we’re just wasting our time. Or worse.”
I looked helplessly at Ada, then at the floor, chagrined.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
He placed his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. His face was still stern, his mouth set in a hard line, but he nodded. “It’s all right. But I mean it. Now, time for the holy water.”
Back at the kitchen, with me feeling like I had my tail between my legs, he picked up a vial of the holy water and in a clockwise direction again, we went to every single window in the house.
He flicked the water on them, the drops sticking and glimmering in the lights of the room, and asked Ada and me to imagine ourselves forcing negative air and energy out of the house, the salt and water combining to form an invisible shield.
We returned to the kitchen and Maximus loudly proclaimed, “I come this night to cleanse this home. This home belongs to the Palominos and negative energy and entities are unwelcome here. They want you to leave. You shall leave!”
The house was silent. Deathly, sickly silent. I was holding my breath and it looked like Ada was too from the way her face was losing color. We were too afraid to move. Maximus was also still, his eyes searching the air around us.
Finally, I had to whisper, “Was that it?”
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “I just thought something would have happened. We now have to go around again and sprinkle the water in every single corner of the house.”
Ada let out the breath she was holding and whined, “Again? I’m getting tired.”
I elbowed her. “Suck it up.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever examined every corner of your place, but there are a lot more corners than you’d think. And we had to go everywhere, even the bathrooms and the icky, spider-webbed crawlspace under the stairs. Together we chanted, “As we clea
nse this space, negativity leave this place.” It slowly went from feeling like a childish rhyme to something much more powerful. I could actually feel it. This push and pull in the air around me, like good and evil were having a tug-of-war and I was their prize.
When it was all over we were back in the kitchen and Maximus was raising the Witch Bottle high in the air. With the overhead light fixture illuminating his flaming hair and submissive posturing, it looked like he was offering the bottle to the gods. In a way, he was.
He declared all negative entities to be drawn to the bottle, where they would remain forever trapped, unable to do any harm.
Once finished, and having ended his speech with “As I will, so mote it be!” it was my turn. I picked up the bell and began to ring it from my fingertips. It was a light, pleasing noise, not at all like the malevolent clanging I had heard in my dream the other night.
I kept it ringing continuously as we went through the house yet again and through ragged, tired breath, I kept repeating, “As the sound of this bell rings through the house, let it be filled with light. Evil and darkness be banished, may goodness and light return,” as we went into every single room once more. It sounds silly and unbelievable but each room did grow a bit lighter, like the bulbs were suddenly swiped clean of all obstructing grime and dust.
After every room was cleared, we came back to the kitchen, where Maximus said his final words.
He looked at us in the eyes, then around him at the walls, his steady expression of determination never changing. “This house has been cleansed and purified. Negativity is banished. Light and goodness fill this place. This house is now a home.”
Then we walked out of the house through the back door, careful not to disturb the trail of salt across the threshold, and went into the darkness of the back yard to bury the Witch Bottle. I knelt on the cold grass before the small hole I had dug earlier with a spoon, which still lay beside it. I picked this spot, near the back of the yard, because it wasn’t as attended by my mother’s black thumb or my father’s lawnmower on the weekends. It was rocky and patchy and no one would ever suspect that something was buried beneath it. Not something that supposedly contained all the negative energy the house had ever seen. With me growing up there, I could tell you that was a lot.