by Ed
They talked a while longer as the night wore on, then Ed and Lorraine stood.
"We should be going," Ed said. He turned to the researchers and said, "You guys wanna get your things from our car now?"
The three men left to go to the car outside.
Ed looked at Al and Carmen and said, "Let us know how it goes after the first night. You have our number. I know that, sometimes, personality conflicts come up, and that makes things difficult. If that's the case, please tell us. But I hope you'll do your best to work with them. They're here to help. Together, we'll get to the bottom of it, then we'll consult the church."
Al and Carmen said goodnight to the Warrens, who left them with their new houseguests, the three men whose job it was to find out what was wrong.
25
Demons Under Scrutiny
The next several weeks were a living hell, not only for the Snedekers but for the researchers as well.
It was almost as if the forces that were moving invisibly through the house were not pleased by the fact that they were under close surveillance by three strangers. It was almost as if they were angry: More than ever before, those forces began to show their power with a vengeance.
One night, Al went to bed before Carmen. He lay down on one of the many mattresses spread over the living room floor.
Peter and Stephanie were already sound asleep in their respective corners, curled up beneath sheets and blankets, their heads resting on their pillows. John had been up for nearly twenty hours and was now snoring lightly on the floor in front of the sofa.
Carmen and Laura were talking softly with Chris and Sal in the dining room when Al finally settled beneath the blankets. He'd had a bit too much to drink and felt sluggish and weary. It wasn't long before his eyelids were lowering heavily, and his breathing was be-coming very slow.
Then he suddenly jerked awake and stared, wide-eyed, at the ceiling for a long moment. Then it began again, the process of going to sleep....
He jerked awake again. This time, he rolled on his side and tried to get as comfortable as possible.
He began to drift away again...not quite asleep and not quite awake...and that was when it came to him....
Spots of bluish-white light danced and spun behind his closed eyelids. They began to gather together as they drew closer and closer...larger and larger...and they began to form a picture...
Not quite asleep, Al turned on his back again and opened his eyes, thinking that perhaps he was experiencing some negative side effect of having had too much beer. That, however, was not the case.
When he opened his eyes, he expected to see the ceiling, but instead, the spinning and dancing lights that seemed to draw nearer and nearer did not go away. Even with his eyes open, he saw them against a deep-black backdrop—not against the ceiling that he knew was above him.
As he watched in awe, the lights drew closer and closer together, slowly forming a figure...a very familiar figure...one that swept rapidly toward his face...the figure of Christ on the cross...but this Christ was unlike any in the pictures...this one had a face that was horribly mutilated...twisted into a deformed, hideous mask of pain...eyes bulging from their sockets...swollen tongue protruding from the fat, cracked lips, which moved and began to speak:
"I can't help you, Allen...I can do nothing...I am dead...do you understand?”
The figure of Christ drew closer and closer.
"I...am...DEAD! I am no MORE!"
It drew closer and closer until Al could smell its putrid breath, until he thought he could feel that fat, protruding tongue on his face...
"I can't HEEAAR YOOUU, Al! I can't HEEAAR YOOUU, Al! IIII'M...NOT...HEEEERE!"
Then the stinking, bleeding figure of the monstrous Christ fell on him, and—
Al sat up screaming again and again.
John sat up and scrambled toward Al.
"What's wrong?" he asked breathlessly. "What's wrong, Al, what's the matter?"
AJ's arms reached upward toward the ceiling. "Jesus! It was Jesus! He came to me! He said He couldn't help! He said He was dead! He said He wasn't here!" Al gasped for breath and his whole body shook with panic.
John put a hand firmly on Al's shoulder. "It's okay, Al, it was just something the demon wanted you to see, that's all, just something to discourage you."
As John spoke, the others rushed in from the dining room and gathered around, concerned after hearing Al's screams.
"It's okay," John said. "This will happen. This is the kind of thing it's going to do. It wants to scare you. All of you. It wants you to let go of your faith. It wants to discourage you. But, believe me, you can't let it."
Al had calmed down quite a bit by then. He turned to John and said, "I'm okay, now. Really. I'm fine."
As John went to his notebook to make a record of the incident, Carmen sat down beside Al.
"You sure you're okay?" she whispered, putting an arm around him and holding him close.
"Yeah, I'm fine now. I just...I just hope that doesn't happen again. That was"—he shook his head and took a deep breath—"really horrible. Believe me."
"You want me to stay with you until you're asleep?"
"Would you mind?"
"Of course not, sweetheart, of course not."
So that was what Carmen did. She stroked his hair and spoke to him in a gentle voice until he was asleep, until it seemed that nothing more was going to be shown to him by whatever force was working in their house.
A couple of weeks later, Al and Carmen were seated on the porch steps together, enjoying the warm summer night. It was late and Laura and the kids were asleep.
Inside, all three of the researchers were awake, talking quietly and watching over the others who were sleeping.
Al and Carmen spoke quietly, enjoying a rare moment of privacy.
"Things've been rough," Al said, putting his arm around her and holding her close.
"No shit," Carmen laughed, laying her head on his shoulder.
"We'll get past it," he said. Then he added quietly, "I hope."
"Oh, we will. I know. It's just everything that we apparently have to go through before we get past it that bothers me."
"Yeah, I know what you mean."
Over the preceding weeks, they had let their friends and relatives know—as gently as possible, but firmly enough to get the point across without giving them any ugly details—that it wouldn't be a good idea to drop in for a visit, at least not for a while. As a result, they got a number of telephone calls from their concerned friends and family asking what was wrong, if anyone was sick, if they were having some sort of marital problems.
Al and Carmen decided to tell a select few about what was going on. They told Al's family, Carmen's sister Lacey, and their neighbor Tanya, who was the least surprised of all and not a bit skeptical. Carmen explained to her that she'd called the Warrens and that their researchers were staying in the house now.
They were enjoying a moment of privacy on the front porch, Al drinking a beer, Carmen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette. They said little, just sat close, vaguely hearing the voices of the researchers in the house, enjoying, for a while, the feeling of being alone and close to one another.
Suddenly, Carmen's cup of tea slipped from her hand. It shattered two steps down from them and hot tea splashed over their feet.
Al flinched at the sound, startled, but Carmen did not move, did not react at all.
"Carmen?" Al said quietly.
Next, the cigarette fell from her fingers and rolled down the steps, its red ember glowing a brighter red as it rolled farther from the glow of the porchlight and into the dark of the night.
Carmen fell back on the steps with a grunt, as though she had been pushed by invisible hands. Her legs jerked. Her mouth opened and her tongue protruded stiffly as her elbows locked and her fingers curled into stiff claws.
"Oh, dear Jesus, Carm!" Al cried, leaning toward her as he dropped the bottle of beer. It, too, shattered and foamy beer hissed down the
steps.
With her eyes open impossibly wide, Carmen's throat began to blacken steadily, to swell slowly into a tremendous, bulging, balloon of flesh, like the throat of a croaking frog.
Al screamed, "Oh my God, get out here get out here now!"
The front door opened and Chris, John, and Sal burst out of the house as Carmen's rigid, trembling limbs relaxed, and she released a long, gurgling sigh.
For a little while—just a very short while—Carmen could hear the voices around her. But they faded fast, moving away from her, far, far away from her, until she could no longer hear them.... She was someplace else, some dark, cold place, so dark that she could see nothing, so unreal and dreamlike that she could feel nothing.
Everywhere she looked, Carmen saw only blackness, a blackness so thick and oppressive that it was almost tangible. There was nothing...nothing around her...nothing to see...nothing to touch...nothing.
And then she looked up.
Far, far above her was a circle of faint, sickening, reddish light, and she realized she was at the bottom of a very deep hole. As she stared at that circle of light high above her, two faces appeared.
One was male, the other female, both very pale, with black, stringy hair. Their mouths split into broad grins simultaneously, revealing narrow teeth gray with decay and separated by silver-thin gaps.
"You miserable cunt!" the man shouted, and his phlegmy voice echoed in the darkness.
"You stupid bitch!" the woman spat.
Carmen huddled in the darkness, cowering from their insults as they continued to spew profanity at her, to call her names and laugh at her fear.
"You think there's something you can do about us?" the man asked.
"You think you have a god more powerful than we are?" the woman laughed. "Your god's a weakling!"
"A pussy!"
"Your god's a cocksucking faggot and he's not going to help you now!"
"You belong to us! Your soul is ours!"
Their voices reverberated throughout the darkness that surrounded Carmen and their spittle rained down on her. Their words dug into her like filthy, jagged fangs.
Al and the three researchers hunched over Carmen, listening as she rasped and gurgled through her swollen, bruised-looking throat, "Ho- Ho-leeee M-Mary, M-Mother of G-God, pr-pray for us sinners, n-now and at the hour of our d-death, a-a- mmmmen...."
As Al began to cry, they lifted Carm from the porch steps and carried her into the house.
The faces leering over the edge of the hole's opening continued to spit obscene insults and blasphemous curses down at Carmen, continued to mock her God and her family, continued to remind her that they and their millions were far too powerful for her, or anyone in her family, to resist or overcome.
And then suddenly, horribly, those faces began to draw closer and become larger and larger, their smiles growing wider, bigger, and their grotesque, rotting teeth becoming more and more detailed as Carmen was somehow lifted up from the bottom of that deep and narrow pit, lifted closer and closer to the opening above, to those faces, those hideous, gaunt, pale faces with their sickening grins and their deep-set, corpselike eyes that watched as she rose higher and higher until her feet were planted firmly on the ground with the hole (she thought) directly behind her. But when she turned slowly and looked down at the ground, there was nothing there, just hard, dry dirt veined with dark, wide, jagged cracks that webbed out in all directions, like lightning bolts that had been sewn together.
Her tormentors were nowhere to be seen. Apparently, they had simply disappeared.
When she looked ahead of her, Carmen realized she was on a road...a long road made up of dry cracked earth. There was so little light, though, as if it were night...and yet, not exactly as if it were night.
Carmen leaned her head back and looked up to see a sky filled with malignant black clouds that were racing by at a dizzying speed.
But there was a light coming from someplace...a sick, cancerous light that illuminated whatever it was that lay on either side of the road.
Carmen did not look, though. She was afraid to look. She began to walk, slowly at first, limping a little from her fear and the trembling exhaustion that coursed through her. Then she picked up her pace, her feet crunching over the broken road as she began to shed tears silently, tears that rolled hotly down her cheeks as she wondered where she was and what had become of her husband, her family, her house...as she wondered what had become of her.
Ahead, the road narrowed to a needle point in the distance. It seemed to go on forever, as far as she could see and farther, the jagged cracks fading to visual memory far, far ahead in the corrupt darkness.
Her chest began to tighten with panic as she realized that she was very, very far from home...just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz...just like Alice in Through the Looking Glass...she was in a frightening, foreign place, and it was very real...and she had no idea how to get back.
She continued walking, her shoulders aching with tension and her chest beating with fear.
Al and the three researchers lay Carmen down on one of the mattresses in the living room.
"Jesus Christ, what's happening to her?" Al rasped, his eyes welling with tears.
"She's under attack," John said.
"But shouldn't we call a doctor or an ambulance?" Al asked. "I mean, my God, she looks like something's wrong with her, like she's dying!"
"There is something wrong with her," Chris said, leaning over her. "She's under attack by whatever demonic force is at work in this house. We've seen this happen before."
"Yeah, Al, we have," John said reassuringly. "A doctor would find nothing. In fact, it might be over by the time we got her to one. Look, where's one of the rosaries?"
"Well, I think there's one, um—" Al looked around until he spotted one on top of the television. He stumbled over the mattresses to the television and grabbed the rosary, then hurried back, holding it out to John.
"No, no," John said. "It's for you. Hold on to the rosary and do the Hail Mary and the Our Father."
"And keep doing them," Chris said firmly, "until we're done." Then he looked at John and Sal and said, "We're gonna have to do the invocation and just keep doing it for as long as it takes."
They both nodded.
"Oh, dear Jesus, it's bad, isn't it?" Al whispered.
"Nothing God can't handle," Chris said reassuringly. And then, as Al started reciting the Hail Mary, the three researchers began to say together, "In the name of Jesus Christ! We command that you leave this place! To go back to the place from which you've come! In the name of Jesus Christ!"
Al knelt at Carmen's head as her throat continued to grow darker and thicker, as the three men repeated the invocation. He placed one hand on her shoulder and gripped the rosary in the other as he said the Hail Mary and the Our Father at nearly a shout, and Chris, John, and Sal continued to invoke the name of Christ.
Carmen gasped for breath as she made her way down the endless road. Finally, she began to look to her right and left at the landscape that surrounded her.
The first thing she noticed were the crosses...enormous crosses made of rugged wood, planted firmly in the ground...upside down...in both directions as far as she could see.
All around those crosses, writhing upward out of the ground, were black, shapeless blobs that seemed to be trying, unsuccessfully, to ooze up from the hard, cracked earth and pull themselves free.
Jagged needles of light shot silently through the black clouds that rushed by overhead, and suddenly, coming from nowhere in particular but from everywhere around her, a deep and gravelly voice—the sound, Carmen thought, of disease—spoke to her:
"They are souls, Carmen...lost souls that belong to us now...to me...just as you belong to me...just as you and everyone in your family belong to me..."
Carmen stopped on the road and screamed at the top of her lungs, praying to God that someone would hear her, that someone would find her and help her.
When Al heard Carmen ma
king a small, strangled sound deep in her throat, he stopped in the middle of the Our Father and leaned toward her, placing a hand on the side of her head and whispering to her, "Carmen, honey, what is it? What's the matter?"
Chris, John, and Sal had been invoking Christ again and again and, suddenly, Chris spoke up and said, "She's not here, Al, she's not with us, just keep praying and keep—"
Upon hearing that, Al said with great determination into Carmen's ear, "Where are you, Carmen, honey, where are you?"
When she began to respond as best she could, the three researchers stopped their invocation and listened.
"Dark," she gurgled, spittle gathering at the corners of her mouth. "Dark place...in a...place...in a dark place," she said, forcing the words up from her chest and through her throat.
"Oh God where is she?" Al cried, looking up at the three men.
"It has her," John said, "and we have to get her back."
Immediately, they raised their voices as they continued their invocation, and, after a long moment, Al finished the Our Father and went into the Hail Mary.
Carmen continued to scream and dropped to her knees as she looked around at all the souls...all the black, trapped souls...feeling oppressed and smothered by their need to break free, by their desire to get away from whatever it was that had brought each of them to this place...
The voice that seemed to come from everywhere, the phlegmy, disgusting voice that seemed to come from the bottom of the very deepest pit in hell began to laugh. Its laughter was deep and throaty and filled with malignant, decadent glee.
Carmen slapped her hands over her face and screamed once again, unable to tolerate the laughter on top of the claustrophobic feeling brought on by the black, tumorous souls squirming up from the barren ground.
After a small eternity, the laughter began to fade and, along with it, the feeling of oppression.
Slowly...ever so slowly...Carmen began to take her hands away from her face.
Her eyes opened to look blearily up at Al, whose concerned face hovered over her, his lips forming a straight, tense line.
"Carm?" he whispered hoarsely. "Oh, dear Jesus, Carm?