THE ACCIDENTAL EXORCIST

by Joshua Graham

  A few pedestrians passing by on the way to the beach with surfboards under their arms or beach bags slung over their shoulders turned their heads briefly, but just continued on their way.

  Abby put the car keys in her bag and stepped out. Things were strangely quiet. It was the middle of the day and perhaps most of the strangely absent and invisible neighbors were probably still at work.

  But where were the police officers?

  A cold breeze gusted through the Phoenix Robellini that stood on either side of the Morgans’ shut door causing them to make a serpentine hiss. Abby shuddered. Where was everyone?

  She knocked on the door. To her surprise, it creaked open. Abby stuck her head inside just enough to see that it was disturbingly dark inside. The curtains must all have been drawn and the lights shut. “Hello?”

  No reply.

  Not a sound but the hissing wind behind her ears.

  Something told her viscerally: Get the hell out, and run! She almost did so. But her rational mind mocked her. You’ve been watching too many scary movies and reading too much Stephen King. There’s a logical explanation for everything. You just don’t know it yet.

  “Right.” Not feeling much better, only shamed by her intellect, Abby pushed the door open. “Hello? Father McGhee?”

  She took a step into the gloom.

  Another cold gust blew at her. Perhaps the back door was open and it was nothing more than a cross current. Then the door behind her creaked again. Of course. Next, the wind would blow it shut. How cliché.

  Abby tried to find a light switch before it happened. But before she could, the door slammed shut with a bang. In spite of the voice of reason forbidding her to be frightened, she let out a gasp. Her heart raced, as she found herself unable to adjust from the bright sunlight outside to the utter darkness within.

  “Hello? It’s Doctor Abigail Lee. Is anyone home?”

  Groping in the dark, she found a wall. It felt odd. Not smooth, but not like the orange peel texture so commonly found on the drywall interiors of San Diego houses. It felt almost like—

  Oh my God!

  –like reptilian scales.

  Then, thinking she’d found the light switch, she touched something cold, viscous, and wet.

  Abby pulled her hand away with an embarrassing yelp.

  Instinctively, she backed away and felt something small and hard press into her bare arm. A light switch.

  Thank God.

  For a moment, she hesitated to turn on the lights. The irrational fear of what she might find warred against the very real fear of not knowing what lurked in the blackness.

  Just before she pushed the switch up, Abby froze. In the distance, and from the sound of it behind a closed door, she heard someone crying. A woman.

  “Cheryl?”

  Abby took a deep breath.

  Flipped the switch.

  And found nothing but a living room, no slime or reptilian scales on the walls. Perfectly normal looking, except for the heavy religious emphasis in its artwork. Adorning the walls were paintings of Jesus’ crucifixion, brown wooden crucifixes, and other decorations which shouted their faith. But all the heavy red curtains had been drawn shut.

  Abby turned to the hallway and shouted, “Where is everyone?”

  Listening carefully, she followed the sound of crying until she arrived at a bedroom door, down the hall past the kitchen towards the backyard. She knocked.

  “Hello? It’s Doctor Lee!” She turned the doorknob.

  Behind the door, something stirred. The sound of agonized straining made Abby release the doorknob’s tension and let it turn back.

  But the door flew open, ripping the knob out of her hand.

  What Abby saw forced a scream into her throat.

  But the sheer horror kept it lodged. Nothing came out.

  Sprawled on the floor, two uniformed policemen lay in pools of blood around their heads. One of them holding his gun. An EMT’s head hung face down over the red jagged edge off a broken window, the sharp points of which protruded from the back of his neck. The other EMT lay sidelong on the floor, half of his head gone, apparently blown away by the gun in his mouth. Over in the corner sat a small dog kennel crate. Trapped behind the metal gate, a small brown Chihuahua whimpered and shivered.

  Abby stumbled back trying to run, but her back hit the hallway wall. Shaking her head side to side, she crumpled to the ground as the door, on its own impulse, swung completely open.

  This revealed a wide-eyed Cheryl, squatting atop a green wingback chair like a frightened animal. Her complexion was bluish-grey, her eyes dark-rimmed like those of a raccoon. Perspiration glistened from her forehead, but she looked like a person fished out of a freezing pond.

  Cheryl’s eyes seemed to make contact with Abby’s, but it felt more like she was looking through her rather than at her. “No...No, no, no!”

  “Ch-Cheryl?”

  At the sound of her name, Cheryl looked all around, as if she hadn’t noticed Abby sitting in the hall outside the door. Her eyes grew so wide there seemed to be no eyelids.

  “Doctor Lee, please…”

  For that brief moment, Cheryl whined like a frightened child. This caused Abby to get up, despite her fear. She stepped into the room and turned to her. “My God, what’s happened here?”

  “I’m begging you! Help me!” At the foot of the chair upon which Cheryl crouched, a black shoe stuck out. The foot within it twitched. That’s when Abby noticed the hem of a black robe.

  “Father McGhee?” Abby took a step toward the chair. But she stopped cold when Cheryl let out a blood congealing scream.

  “They’ve come back for me! Sweet Jesus, they’ve come back!”

  Abby rushed over to the priest. Her rational mind screamed in protest, Remember that wild beast in Salton Sea Women’s Penitentiary? The one who almost tore you to pieces?

  Not taking her eyes off Cheryl—who still seemed herself, just terrified and pointing at Father McGhee with one hand and with the other covering her mouth—Abby knelt and pulled the priest up to a seated position.

  Alive, thank God, but trembling. His eyes darted back and forth between Abby and Cheryl in the chair above him. He was a frail man, who couldn’t have been much heavier than Abby herself. White hair covered his head completely. His pale eyebrows arched with trepidation.

  “You must leave!” He whispered, and tried to stand.

  “Leave?”

  A low-pitched growl filled the room. Abby didn’t want to look up, because something inside her—definitely not her rational mind—told her she wouldn’t find Cheryl there anymore.

  “Get up, Father. Hurry.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  He tried to lift his finger to point, but it shot back down. As if someone grabbed it and yanked it down. “They won’t let me.”

  At first, she thought the priest was delirious and was referring to the dead policeman and EMT. But when she looked up, there was Cheryl—or what once had been—glaring down monstrously, thick saliva rolling from her teeth and lower jaw. Her face was a web of veins, her eyes bulging to the point of popping out.

  When she spoke, it sounded like a hundred vulgar men, their words guttural and wet with mucous. “Get out of here, you whore!”

  Nothing would have made Abby happier than to comply. But when she tried to take Father McGhee’s hand, the creature that had been Cheryl roared and struck her across the face.

  Abby fell back on her rear and watched in horror as Cheryl stood up slowly off her haunches, snarled at the priest and pointed her open hand at him. To her Abby’s utter astonishment, Father McGhee, now straining to breathe and clutching his throat, floated into the air. The little dog in the kennel crate barked nervously.

  Cheryl flung her hand toward the wall and the Priest went flying into it. His back hit the wall. His feet dangled three feet off the ground but he did not fall or slide down. Instead, he hung there like black beetle pinned to a wood block—only, his
limbs were still moving and his mouth opened and shut, opened and shut, like a dying fish on the hot surface of a dock.

  From within his robe he pulled out a crucifix and tried to wave it at Cheryl.

  She only laughed.

  The crucifix fell to the ground, right on top of a set of rosary beads and a Bible.

  “THEY ONLY WORK IF YOU HAVE FAITH…FATHER!”

  Gasping, Father McGhee tried to answer through his choked breath. “I…am…not afraid…of you!”

  The Cheryl creature turned to Abby, causing her to back away. Abby’s hands found the Bible. She grabbed it, foolishly thinking she could use it like a shield. With a sickly jaundiced eye, Cheryl glared at Abby, then turned back to the priest. Once again, in manifold voices, Cheryl said to Father McGhee, “I KNOW ALL YOUR SINS.” Then she turned to Abby and smiled with teeth stained with blood from her gums. “AND YOUR’S TOO, ABIGAIL LEE.”

  “Doctor Lee…” the priest muttered. “I don’t think…I…have enough—”

  “SHUT UP, TIRESOME OLD FOOL!” Cheryl lifted both of her hands towards him. His body came forward from the wall, then floated towards the curtains facing the backyard. “YOU NO LONGER AMUSE ME!”

  A thunderous sound shook the room. The walls began to creak and splinter. The entire house began to shake. Cheryl threw one hand forward causing Father McGhee to crash through the glass, tearing the curtains out with him.

  That’s when Abby saw a pair of legs dangling outside the window.

  Ted Morgan, Cheryl’s husband.

  “Oh my God!”

  “DON’T BOTHER CALLING FOR GOD, SWEETIE. HE’S DEAD!” Cheryl—or the creature that controlled her—regarded Abby and licked her dripping lips like a wild hyena about feast on the entrails of a leftover gazelle.

  Dust and drywall crumbled from the ceiling onto the uniformed bodies of the creature’s victims. Clutching Father McGhee’s Bible to her chest, Abby looked up.

  It shouldn’t have shocked her but it did. Cheryl’s pale, cadaverous feet were floating in the air, her entire body lit up with a sickly green hue. Her hair spread out like Medusa, her skirt flapped in the stench of the wind, which howled and whirled around the quaking room.

  “WHY DO YOU REMAIN, ABBY?”

  Abby shook the priest’s Bible at it. “For Cheryl. Leave her alone!”

  The creature let out a horrible belching sound, accompanied by a stench like rotting flesh. It was laughing. A chorus of hundreds of ghouls, laughing. “DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO I AM, YOU PITIFUL LITTLE GIRL?”

  As, the house shook, pieces of plaster got into Abby’s eyes, nose and mouth. Then something surged though her entire being. It wasn’t adrenaline—she could tell. It was a powerful sense of calm, like the familiarity of a childhood song. She found herself at the point of decision: fight or flight.

  “I’M FEELING BENEVOLENT, ABBY. RUN AWAY NOW, AND I’LL LET YOU LIVE.”

  It wasn’t her scientific mind telling her to stay. No, that part of her had told her to run before she even entered the house. Whatever it was, it felt like something—someone she’d known all her life. “I’m not leaving without Cheryl!” She stood up.

  The creature’s eyes glowed bloody red. Cheryl’s veined face became skeletal, pulling her skin so taut it began to crack, and blood oozed from the fissures. Instantly, Abby felt an enormous weight push her down to the ground. She fell and the Bible bounced away.

  “I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE!”

  “And I told you: Not without Cheryl!” Tears of fright and determination welled up in her eyes.

  “FOOL! FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS I HAVE TRAVELLED THE EARTH SEEKING TO DEVOUR WHOMEVER I PLEASE! TODAY, BEFORE YOU DRAW YOUR LAST BREATH, YOU SHALL KNOW THE NAME OF HIM WHO RULES OVER ALL THE EARTH.”

  The wind felt like a tornado now. All kinds of objects flew around the room. The green chair floated, the entire four-post bed also rose off the ground. But that calm strong voice within prompted Abby to shout, “Who are you!”

  The demon laughed arrogantly. “LEGION.”

  At the very mention of its name, Abby felt the blood drain from her face. She recognized IT from one of the gospels, but couldn’t quite remember to what end.

  It let out another horrific roar.

  This time, the cage of the Chihuahua’s kennel began rattling. The little dog within had changed. Flashing its fangs, its ears lying flat, it growled and smashed itself repeatedly against the metal gate until, bloodied by repeated blows, it dislodged from its plastic frame.

  Snarling, the dog ran over, leapt at Abby aiming straight for her neck.

  Abby gasped and put up her arm to block it. The dog sank its razor-sharp fangs into her forearm and thrashed violently. Nothing she could do would pry it off. The more she pulled, the deeper it bit.

  Frantic, her arm bleeding and burning with pain, Abby dropped to the floor, breaking her fall with the demon-possessed dog. It released its jaws.

  Exploiting the stunned animal’s stupor, she grabbed it with both hands, tossed it into the closet, and shut the door. Panting, she pressed her back up against the door. But the dog began slamming against the closet walls and door, growling ferociously, trying to get out. Abby would not move from the door. The struggle continued until finally, the dog yelped and the slamming stopped.

  A bloody puddle edged out from beneath the closet door, touching the heel of Abby’s shoes. A cold tingle crept up her spine.

  Overwhelmed and exhausted, Abby eyed the door, the windows, any possible exit. If she could just make a dash for—

  The door swung shut just as she reached it. No matter how hard she twisted and pulled, it would not open. Even though it had no lock.

  “I GAVE YOU A CHANCE TO LEAVE,” Legion’s chorus of voices said. A dark impulse forced Abby onto her back. She couldn’t move her arms or legs, much less get up.

  Cheryl’s body descended and straddled Abby’s chest.

  Air refused to enter her lungs.

  She tried to scream but nothing came out.

  Up on the wall behind the bedpost hung a painting, tilted irreverently to the side. It depicted Saint Peter, sinking into the water, waves crashing around him, and reaching out and grabbing the hand of Jesus, who stood on the water’s surface. The look of fear on Peter’s face so resembled Abby’s that without thinking, she cried out in her heart, “Jesus!”

  To her amazement, the words actually came out of her mouth.

  Air rushed through her lungs.

  She gasped for more.

  Above her, the creature inhabiting Cheryl’s corporeal form reared up, its face twisted in repulsion and fright. “WHAT DID YOU SAY?”

  At once, all the stories she had put out of her mind from her youth of Jesus’ casting out demons came back to her. She remembered now. It was His name. The power and authority therein.

  “In the name of Jesus!”

  A chorus of odious, belligerent shouts filled the air. The creature jumped back momentarily. Regaining its ferocity, it came toward Abby, a threat in every purposeful step.

  Abby grabbed the crucifix off the floor and held it up.

  The creature spat and laughed cruelly. “HAVEN’T YOU LEARNED?” It lunged at her with outstretched, claws. “HYPOCRITE! YOU HAVEN’T GOT THE FAITH TO—”

  Abby thrust the cross flat against the creatures chest, right between Cheryl’s breasts. The creature’s pained howl quickly drowned out the sizzling sound burning flesh.

  Abby understood.

  She had made the choice to believe.

  And this demon, Legion, knew as well. It had once faced the power of the Christ and begged to be cast into a herd of pigs rather than be destroyed. It feared the name and power.

  Streams of smoke rose from a branded cross that seared the skin on Cheryl’s chest. For a moment, her eyes became normal. Pleaded for help. But just as quickly, returned to their demonic state.

  Legion’s voices diminished. Sounded fewer, weaker.

  But not a bit less hateful or savage. Chest heaving, through labor
ed breaths, its voices became hoarse. “I will tear your limbs off, Abigail Lee…I will eviscerate you…and feast on your innards. BEFORE I kill you!”

  From the gospel of Luke, the words of Christ resounded in her spirit: “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”

  “You’ll do nothing but flee.” Abby climbed to her feet and for the first time, dared to step forward, advance upon the demons that possessed Cheryl. She clutched the Bible in one hand, and the crucifix in the other, which she pointed at the creature.

  The creature scoffed. Took two steps back. “You think I’m some kind of vampire? You fool! If a Jesuit priest didn’t have the faith to challenge me, what makes you think—?”

  Emboldened at its retreat, Abby stood tall. “In the name of Jesus, I command you: be silent!”

  Without another word, the creature spread its hands wide and vomited a putrid, thick substance all over Abby’s face. It felt like a million maggots crawling all over her, eating her flesh. She screamed. Didn’t know if she should or could wipe it off her eyes, lips and nose.

  Then, with all its previous intensity, the creature let out a gruesome shriek. A suffocating sensation came over Abby. Dark. Frigid. She shuddered.

  I know all your sins, Abby.

  Images, memories she thought long forgotten, all flooded her mind. Guilt, shame, hatred, anger, people she’d silently cursed, wished dead, every lie, prideful remark, haughty look, surrounded her. Closed in to smother her.

  “No….” The spiritual anguish actually caused her physical pain. Images of her dead mother—disapproving, glaring at her, accusing her.

  Liar!

  Cheater!

  Fraud!

  Hypocrite!

  Worthless, useless…

  …No, this isn’t her…it’s a lie…

  Legion spoke again. Its confidence renewed. “You will die here, and nobody will ever know what happened. No one will care. No one will remember you.”

  Despair filled her heart. Tears rolled down her face, matting her hair into her mouth along with the rancid puke that hardened on her skin. Her hands, her entire body quivered, as though suffering hypothermia. In the corner of her eye, she noticed the dead police officer’s gun lying on the rug, next to his open hand.