by Duncan, Lex
“I put my hand on my hip when I get mad?”
“Yeah, you do. You've been hanging around Aralia too much.”
“You say that like it's a bad thing.”
He gave me a look that said he thought it was. He just didn't know her like I did. “Anyway, you were yelling at me. Saying that you told me so. That we should have gone to the movies instead.”
“Yeah, I'm definitely picking the place next time.”
That gave him pause. He sighed. “I should have listened to you.”
No one's ever told me that before. “You couldn't have known what was going to happen.”
He looked away, pretended to be really interested in the damask wallpaper. “I guess not.”
“Do you remember anything that happened?” I asked. The memory of that woman cutting her throat made me sick. I couldn't imagine what it would be like for Max if he remembered.
“I remember Gershom talking about Dis or whatever it was. After that, it's like...A hole. Nothing.” He shuddered. “What happened to him? Is he dead?”
He needed to be. “Nope. Dante got him locked up. His name isn't even Gershom. It's...Zachary something or other. I guess he was a demonology professor in Portland before he changed his name and moved here. Dante thinks he'd gotten possessed one day and decided he needed to open a night club and sacrifice a bunch of people to the demon overlord.”
“Wow,” Max breathed. He touched the bandages on his chest. “Mind telling me what these are about?”
“Uh,” I began uselessly. How was I supposed to explain that Dante stabbed him in the chest to save him from a demon? “Well...”
Right on cue, Dante appeared in the doorway with Aralia in tow. He always had perfect timing. “You were exorcized, Max.”
“I was?” Max said.
“He was?” I joined in. Exorcisms didn't work, that was a known fact. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and exorcisms didn't work.
Dante pulled a chair up next to mine and sat down, focusing on Max like he'd focused on me the first night we met. That was how I knew that what he had to say was something big. Something important. “Max, you need to understand the severity of what happened to you. That man, Gershom, summoned a demon to you and that demon possessed you. Do you understand?”
Max nodded.
“To avoid having to kill you, I performed what is known as The Fifth Sacrament,” Dante's gaze flickered to meet mine. “You may know it as the rite of exorcism.”
“How is that possible?” I asked. “Exorcism―”
“Is a fraud,” Dante said. He hunched forward in his seat, the outline of the bandages on his arm pressed against the fabric of his shirt. A scar had formed on his hand where he'd cut it. “The exorcisms you see on television, in the newspapers...It doesn't work. The Fifth Sacrament is true exorcism. It is the only way to remove a demon from a human body. Anything else is a waste of time.”
Stunned. That was a good word for what I was feeling. Gobsmacked, perhaps. That was a British word, right? Aralia would be proud of me for thinking of it.
My head was spinning. Everything I'd been told about exorcism was a lie. Years of demonology classes didn't prepare me for this. The government's websites didn't prepare me for this. Armageddon Now didn't prepare me for this.
The Fifth Sacrament. True exorcism. The only way to remove a demon from a human body. This was...the best news I'd heard in a long, long time.
“You can help Rosie, then,” I said. Shock ascended to hope. A hope I thought I lost six months ago when Rosie was admitted to the sanatorium.
In my fantasy world, Dante enthusiastically agreed. He said he'd do everything in his power to get that demon out of her. I hugged him and he hugged me in return. We went to the sanatorium. Exorcized Rosie. And then the two of us moved far away from Stone Chapel and never looked back.
But the thing about fantasies is exactly that. They're fantasies. Fickle flights of fancy that exist solely in the backs of our minds to lean on when we have nothing else to do the job. I, for one, leaned on my fantasies a lot. They were better than my reality. Especially this reality.
Because, in this reality, Dante didn't agree. We didn't hug. We weren't rushing to the sanatorium. We sat there in one of the many spare bedrooms in his giant, rotting house and he had that look in his eyes. That disgusting look of sympathy I couldn't stand to see from anyone. I wanted to slap it right off his pretty face.
“It's not that simple,” he said.
We read a poem in English class once. Sophomore year. Emily Dickinson. Hope was a thing with feathers. I guess nobody told her how easily those feathers could be clipped. “How is it not that simple?”
He stood. “Beatrice―”
Not to be outdone, I stood, too. “Don't Beatrice me!”
I sounded like a pissed off housewife screaming at her lazy husband. But what about my needs?! Do the dishes! Take out the trash! Exorcise my best friend!
Max tried butting in. “Maybe we can work something out.”
I glared at him. I glared at him so hard that he actually shrank back against the pillows.
“Or not,” he muttered.
Dante rested his hand on my shoulder. “Beatrice, you―”
“Don't touch me,” I shoved his hand away. “And don't tell me I wouldn't understand. That's what you were about to say, right? Beatrice, you won't understand. Well, I have news for you, Dante Arturo. I'm not stupid, but you don't see that because you've barely given me a chance!”
Now, he was the one who was stunned. Shocked. Gobsmacked. Whatever. Tiny cracks in his stoic defenses began to show, but were wiped away before I could commit them to memory. “That isn't true.”
“Then why won't you tell me, huh? What are you hiding?”
“Are the two of you quite finished?” Aralia asked, inspecting her nails as she did when she got bored. “You're bickering like an old married couple. Fitting, I suppose, but still very annoying.”
“How in the world is that fitting?” I snapped.
There it was. The trademark Aralia Spinosa Withering Stare. “You're reading the Divine Comedy in school, aren't you?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Aralia,” Dante sighed. “This isn't a time for your jokes.”
It was now.
“No,” I said. “I want to know what she means.”
She smirked, continuing despite Dante's wishes. “The Beatrice in Paradisio was a real person, you know. Dante Alighieri was completely infatuated with her.”
Oh. Now it all made sense. That’s why Aralia was so amused by my name when she first heard it. Why she thought it was so adorable. This is what I got for not paying attention in class.
“Though they only met twice and she died terribly young, but still.”
“Are you done?” Dante asked tiredly.
“Are you?” She replied, gesturing to him and I. “Because I could take Max and we could leave while the two of you snog.”
I didn't know what snogging meant, but given the deeply annoyed look on Dante's face, I didn't want to find out.
“Why don't you trust me?” I asked him, steering the conversation back toward things that mattered. “Haven't I proven that you can? Or are you trying to protect me?”
Those cracks I'd seen before returned, splintering his veneer of calm, letting true anger shine through. But he didn't give in to it. He never did.
“So that's it, then,” I said. Tears brimmed in my eyes. God, why did I have to be an angry crier? “You won't help? Rosie's going to die any day now and you know the one way to cure her and you won't help?”
“I'm sor―”
I couldn't listen to another worthless apology. Apologies weren't going to save Rosie. Only Dante could do that and he'd made it clear that he didn't want to. Fleeing the room before anyone could see my tears, I ran down the hall to my own bedroom and slammed the door as hard as I could.
***
I was dreaming. I knew I was dreaming be
cause I was watching a far gone version of myself play tag with a far gone version of Rosie in the backyard of the orphanage. The sun shone warmly on our pudgy seven year old faces and the sky was bluer than a basket of robin's eggs. It was a beautiful day. A perfect day. Until it wasn't.
Younger Me grinned devilishly as she tagged Younger Rosie's shoulder. “Got you!”
Younger Rosie wilted. She hated tag because she always lost. She was smaller than me. Frailer. Couldn't stay outside as long. She wondered if it was the medicine that was making her sick. Wasn't medicine supposed to help?
She never got why Mother Arden made her take those pills or why she heard that scary voice sometimes. She told me about the voice, about how it urged her to do bad things to herself and other people. Being seven, I didn't understand what she meant, nor did I want to think about it. It scared me. It scared her, too. So, being seven, we went outside. We played tag.
And then the voice began to whisper.
“Rosie?” Younger Me asked when Younger Rosie didn't give chase like she was supposed to. Younger Me remembered the scary voice. Younger Me was afraid. Of her own best friend.
Younger Rosie wouldn't move. She wouldn't speak. She stared down at her feet, long brown hair falling forward to cover her face. Younger Me said her name again. She didn't respond.
It was a beautiful day. A perfect day. A day I remembered with complete clarity. A day I would never forget. Because on that day, I was introduced to my best friend's “sickness.” To the evil that lurked inside of her. In the worst way possible.
Younger Me turned toward the orphanage. Older Me yelled for her to stand still, but of course, Younger Me couldn't hear. This wasn't a dream. It was a memory. And we couldn't change memories, no matter how hard we tried.
Therefore, Younger Me took that fateful step. The step that would change her life. Change Rosie's life. It would send her to the sanatorium. It would send me to the hospital. It would hurt. It would bruise. It would transform.
When Younger Me's foot hit the grass, Younger Rosie attacked. Seeing it from an outsider's perspective made me realize how horrific it actually was.
It was a flurry of nails and hair and teeth. Panicked, pained shrieks combined with the feral growling of a monster. Birds took flight from their places in the trees. A rabbit bolted into the bushes. Younger Rosie pinned Younger Me to the ground, her hand closed around my throat. Bleeding bite marks and vicious scratches lacerated my arms and legs.
“Stop it, Rosie!” Younger Me sobbed. “Stop it!”
Her grip tightened, cutting off my air supply. Younger Me gasped and kicked and gurgled, terrified of the black eyed thing that used to be her only friend.
A music box melody drifted in from down the street. Even in my fading state, I recognized the song. “Ring Around the Rosie.” The ice cream truck.
Ring around the rosie...
Rosie smiled. Her nails bit bloody crescents into my skin.
Pockets full of posie...
“I don't think I like you anymore.”
Ashes...
Fat tears rolled down my cheeks. I didn't think I liked her anymore, either.
Ashes...
“I'm going to kill you now.” Her smile vanished.
We all fall down...
Thirteen
I awoke with a start, flying up from my pillows with my hand to my neck. I hadn't had that particular nightmare in years. Letting my pulse calm to normal levels, I blinked the residual tears from my eyes and swung my legs over the side of the bed. The floorboards were cool against the soles of my feet.
“Easy does it, Beatrice,” I told myself. I looked out the window. The crescent moon winked back at me from its place in the star studded sky. It was late. Too late to be wandering around the house, but I wasn't going to be getting any more sleep tonight, so I put my hair up in a messy ponytail and went to see if Dante was awake.
We had some unfinished business to take care of.
I checked his usual haunt, his study. He wasn't in there. I rounded the corner to the adjacent hallway. The mysterious TV room glowed like a beacon at the end of it. Eureka.
“Hey,” I said, nudging the double doors open. “Can I talk―Oh my God!”
Fine art came in many forms. Paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, murals, graffiti...Dante's body.
He stood by the desk in nothing but a pair of jeans. The sight of his exposed torso might have made me faint if this were 1841. What a scandal it would be! A younger girl barging into an older gentleman's parlor unannounced, only to catch him undressed and unawares! Shame on me. Shame on him for being indecent!
But this wasn't 1841 and I always wondered what he looked like with his shirt off. I mean, come on, who didn't? Now I knew. He looked like perfection. Lithe, chiseled, damaged perfection. Scars of all shapes and sizes puckered his skin. The largest one cut across his stomach in a diagonal line, extended to his hip and disappeared underneath the hem of his jeans.
I liked to think scars were signs of survival, and by this logic, Dante had survived a lot.
“Beatrice,” he breathed, coming as close to shock as I'd ever heard him. He grabbed his shirt and pulled it over his head. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“I―” Crap. What was the protocol for these sorts of things? I wasn't used to living down the hall from attractive, shirtless men. “I couldn't sleep. And, uhm, I figured you'd be awake. And you are.”
“Yes,” he said, clearing his throat. “I am.”
“Is there a reason why you weren't―”
“I just got out of the shower.”
“Oh.”
“What do you need, Beatrice?” He asked.
“I wanted to talk to you,” I said, glad that we'd moved past the whole...half-naked thing. “About earlier.”
He motioned to the couch and waited for me to sit down before he did so himself. “All right.”
I folded my hands in my lap. The easiest way to remove a band-aid was to rip it off. The same could be said for difficult conversations. The easiest way to begin them was to rip that band-aid off. Go for the jugular. So that's what I did. Figuratively. “I'm pissed. At you. Like, really pissed. Really, really pissed.”
Dante rested his arm across the top of the couch. He angled his body toward me, his eyes searching my face. From that very first night until now, he always looked at me the same way. Like I was a puzzle he couldn't understand. “Why?”
“Because you won't help me,” I said, swallowing my impatience. Dante was great with a gun and a hunter without equal but for what he had in pure talent he lacked in people skills. It was clear to me now that emotion was something he struggled with. If I was going to get through to him, I needed to be as clear and clinical as possible. “Because my best friend is going to die and because you know how to save her, but you won't do anything about it. I don’t get it. I thought you’d want to help.”
He didn't say a single word for what felt like a very long time. The fire crackled, a tree branch clawed against the window, but Dante was silent. The circles around his eyes had gotten darker, the scruff on his jaw more prominent. He hid it well, but up close he couldn’t hide just how exhausted he was.
“How many hours of sleep have you gotten this week?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I can’t help you because if I attempt the Fifth Sacrament again, it will more than likely kill me.”
“What?” I'd fallen into the same trap everyone else did. I thought Dante invincible. Like Batman if Batman wore a wool trench coat and killed demons. “How?”
He pressed his thumb and his index finger against his eyes. “As you may have noticed, the rite requires a great deal of the banisher's life force. Especially when you have to do it without preparation. It usually requires a number of other things. A live sacrifice, more blood, candles...”
“That's why Aralia told you not to do it.” All those blurry memories from that night were finally becoming clear. “She was afraid it would...”
&
nbsp; But he did it anyway. He looked death in the face and spat in it, saving Max to the detriment of his own health. That detriment was weighing on him. Heavily.
I couldn't ask him to kill himself for my sake. Rosie wouldn't want that. I didn't, either. I was disappointed that he couldn’t help. But I wasn't angry anymore. I couldn't be.
“For what it's worth, I truly am sorry,” Dante said. There something genuine in his eyes, so genuine that it made my face get red again. He noticed. “Are you all right?”
I looked away, focused on the fire, resisted the urge to throw myself in it. “I'm fine.”
We drifted into our usual silence. It was getting more comfortable these days. Before, I found it painfully awkward, but now I didn't mind it so much. It was nice to have someone I could just...sit with.
And sit we did. My eyelids grew heavier and heavier with the slow passage of time. I considered going back to bed when a question popped to the forefront of my consciousness.
“Are you really the only one who can do an exorcism? The only person in the world?”
Arms crossed over his chest, Dante leaned back against the cushions. His eyes were closed. “In theory, no.”
I yawned. “In theory?”
“Anyone could do it, I suppose. But it's an incredibly difficult process. It breaks the mind, the body, the spirit. Rips the Veil clean open.”
The Veil. The imaginary barrier between our realm and the one demons supposedly inhabited. Proving its existence had long been the subject of scientific and religious debate. Dante seemed to think it existed, though, and he was an expert.
“If you aren't vigilant,” he said, “you're leaving yourself and the entire world open to possession. Or worse.”
“There are worse things than possession?”
As usual, his silence spoke volumes.
“Great.” More nightmares for me. “How did you figure out how to do it? Was there, like, an instructional video or something?”
His eyes opened. He stared up at the ceiling, unblinking. “I was taught.”
“By who?” Details about Dante's personal life were far and few. What little I knew came from Aralia and it was all basic stuff. His favorite color was red. Burgundy red. He didn’t have a middle name. He never went on dates. He could drink an entire pot of coffee by himself. Now, here he was, offering up information without much prompting. I felt like I’d just struck gold.