Chicken? She wouldn’t say that if she could see me facing down a demon. Of course, she doesn’t know that I’m an exorcist. Although, I’m sure that at some point she’ll put two and two together. She’ll remember the time she caught me filling up my flask with holy water from the fancy marble fountain in the church. Or when she noticed the weird burn marks on my leg—an injury from a particularly grueling exorcism. And once she discovers the truth … I don’t know. I’d like to believe that Vanessa would still be my friend, but people can get weird about things like casting out demons. Even best friends.
“Vanessa!” Mrs. O’Malley bellows from the bottom of the stairs. “Get down here. Right. Now.”
Vanessa makes a face. “Only one more year until I’m up for parole,” she says, getting off the bed. “I swear, my main criterion for college is that it’s in another state.”
She stomps out of the room. Vanessa may think that being away from her family is the key to freedom, but she only has to look in my direction to know that freedom’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Even though I’m pretty good at covering it up, I miss my mom so much, it’s a physical ache. It’s a feeling that’s always with me, as strong and solid as my heartbeat. Nothing will feel right until she’s back and I can apologize. And the worst part is that I have no clue when that will be.
Chapter
3
UNCLE ROY glances at me over his half-moon glasses as I enter the rectory.
We usually complete the paperwork for an exorcism right away, but Uncle Roy was too tired to work on Mrs. Collins’s file the other day. An exorcism can take a lot of energy, and I’ve noticed that they’ve affected him more than usual lately.
Maybe if he’d just let me do one myself, then he wouldn’t be so tired.
I plunk down at the scarred wooden desk across from him. Moo, my cat, immediately settles across my feet. I grab a yellow legal pad and a pen from the ugly clay holder that one of the parishioners gave Uncle Roy for Christmas one year.
Uncle Roy says it’s important to keep records. I get that, but I wish he would at least let me use a computer. He makes me handwrite everything because he’s paranoid that someone will hack our files. I’m not sure who he thinks would care enough to do that—and what they’d do with the information if they did manage to get their hands on it—but when I complain, he lectures me about confidentiality. Going to see an exorcist? Not exactly something anyone wants made public.
Fair enough. I mean, it’s definitely not something I want anyone to know I’m involved in. But I still wish I could use a computer.
“So, Shelby. What could you have done differently?” Uncle Roy taps a pencil against his lips.
“Uh … I don’t know. Talk faster?” I reach down to move Moo off my feet; her weight has already made them fall asleep, sending prickles up my legs.
He nods. “Yes, but your pronunciation was off as well. And you were much too far from the bed! You need to get in there. Right up close.”
“Within spitting distance? No thank you.” I shudder.
Uncle Roy’s eyes narrow. “Shelby, you need to take this seriously.”
“I do take it seriously,” I say, stamping my sleepy left foot against the threadbare Oriental carpet. “Maybe if you’d just let me finish one time—”
“You did finish,” he interrupts. “And you failed.”
I slouch in my chair, arms crossed. I can feel a headache coming on. Uncle Roy’s lectures are worse than the paperwork.
“You need to practice the incantation,” he says. “It’s critical that you get it right. Do you know what can happen if you don’t say it properly?”
“I know, I know. The exorcism won’t work.”
“True, but it’s more than that.” He sighs and tosses his pencil onto the desk. “These are very powerful words, Shelby. Say them wrong, and … well, you can compromise the very soul you’re trying to save.”
He’s warned me about this before, of course. Many times. And it’s not that I don’t listen. It’s just that, even after all my training, even after everything Uncle Roy has taught me, I’m still not convinced that I can actually do it—save someone’s soul.
Most Catholics would argue that it’s not possible. For one thing, I’m not a priest; exorcists are always priests, at least in the Catholic faith. Also, since there are no female priests, that also means there are no female exorcists by default. I’m zero for two.
Uncle Roy is a bit bendy on those particular rules.
“It’s very important that you practice the incantation until you can say it in your sleep,” he says.
I roll my eyes. As previously mentioned, Latin is a bitch to learn, so I feel like he should cut me some slack. I open my mouth to tell him that, but he holds up his hand to stop me.
“It’s not just that you got the incantation wrong, Shelby. You also forgot to secure the legs.” Uncle Roy scowls. “You could have been seriously hurt. Always secure the legs!” He bangs his fist on the desk for emphasis.
As he continues to nitpick my session, I stare over his shoulder at the painting of Mary hanging behind him on the wall. The painting is a bit Mona Lisa–like in that wherever I am in the room, her eyes seem to follow me. Its placement allows me to tune Uncle Roy out without him noticing that I’m not actually paying attention to him. Very handy.
Eventually Uncle Roy’s lecture winds down, and he lets me get back to writing my report. With a sigh, I pick up my pen again and start to scribble.
Case Number: EX100-17-3792
Incident: The Exorcism of Rose Collins
Exorcist: Shelby Black
At approximately 1600 hours on the 2nd of May, Father Roy and I met with Abe Collins regarding his wife, Rose Collins. Mr. Collins believed that his wife was presenting signs of demonic possession—suffering from nightmares, talking in tongues, sharp decline in personal hygiene, etc.
After consulting with Mr. Collins—a longtime parishioner of St. Jude’s—Father Roy and I agreed to visit his wife the next—
Moo suddenly leaps on top of the desk, sending the pages of my report flying. Uncle Roy quickly pushes his chair back as far as possible. My cat has been in the room with us for the past twenty minutes, hidden near my feet, but Uncle Roy only ever sneezes when he actually sees her.
“Shoo,” he says, flapping his hands at her. “Shoo!”
Moo stays right where she is, staring him down, daring him to touch her. I fight a smile. She knows that Uncle Roy is “allergic” to her; she just likes to screw with him.
Moo is a stray. She’s white with wide green eyes. She looks innocent, but she’s a scrapper. The tip of her ear is missing from some long-ago cat fight. She showed up on our doorstep one night last year, and, after much begging, Uncle Roy let me keep her. I guess he must have a soft spot for strays. After all, he took me and Mom in after Dad left to “find himself” in California. Staying with Uncle Roy was supposed to be short-term, just until we got back on our feet. But two years later, we’re still here. Or I am, anyway.
Uncle Roy sneezes. I grab Moo off of the table and give her a scratch behind the ears before setting her in the hall and kicking the door closed with the toe of my sneaker.
I sit back down at my desk. As he continues to snuffle, I turn back to my report.
… day. When we arrived, Father Roy asked me to lead the exorcism. He stayed out in the hall while I conducted a survey of the scene. Mrs. Collins was in her room, still in bed, although not asleep. The room totally reeked like sulfur, so I was confident that possession had occurred.
I quickly handcuffed a half-asleep Mrs. Collins to the bed. Being that she was so old, I didn’t think it was necessary to chain her legs as well, although, according to some people, I should have.
The sun has begun its descent behind the mountains, and the office is quickly getting dark. Uncle Roy leans over and flicks on his faux Tiffany desk lamp. Colored light spills across my page.
Once I had her secured, Father Roy came into the room to supervise. When she s
aw him, Mrs. Collins totally freaked and started struggling to get free. Typical reaction, as demons aren’t too fond of priests.
I started the incantation. I forgot one word, which does not seem like such a big deal to me, especially considering that this was supposed to be my first time doing an exorcism on my own. Unfortunately, when I finished the chant, Mrs. Collins was still possessed. This could be due to a number of reasons, but I think it’s mainly because Father Roy kept interrupting me. It’s very hard to concentrate when someone keeps interrupting you.
At that point, Father Roy jumped in—even though I was handling it—and completed the exorcism.
By the time I’ve finished the report, my hand is cramped and it’s completely dark outside. It’s been a long day, and my brain is foggy.
Uncle Roy peers over his glasses at me. “All done?”
I rip the pages off the legal pad and hand them over. He riffles through them, tsking at my terrible handwriting, then slides the report into a file folder, which he locks inside one of the steel filing cabinets lining the wall. He wears the key to the filing cabinets on a chain around his neck. I’ve never seen him take it off.
Like I said, he takes confidentiality very seriously.
“I’ll see you back at the house,” he says, turning back to his work.
I stand up and stretch. I grab my messenger bag from underneath the desk. I’m almost out the door when he says, “And, Shelby?”
I turn around, but Uncle Roy doesn’t look up.
“Make sure you practice the incantation.”
* * *
I walk quickly past the small cemetery that lies between the church and our small clapboard house. All of the headstones are ancient—the cemetery ran out of room a long time ago—so it feels less creepy than if the epitaphs held the names of people I actually knew. Less creepy, but still creepy.
I zip up the steps of our house and through the screen door. Stopping in the kitchen, I grab a sleeve of graham crackers and a glass of milk, then head down the narrow hall toward the back of the house.
There’s a new painting on the wall—a big blob of red with a black center. Uncle Roy is way into painting lately, and his rudimentary canvases are all over our house. He only paints flowers, for some reason, and I think this one is supposed to be a poppy. He’s a terrible artist, and he doesn’t seem to be improving, even though he’s been painting for months. Part of me wonders if he enjoys it as much as he claims or if he’s just sticking with it because he hates to quit anything.
I continue down the hall. The screened-in porch at the back of the house is probably my favorite place in the world. It faces a copse of evergreen trees, and when it rains, which it does a lot of in Seattle, I sit out here and listen to it drum against the roof.
After setting my milk and graham crackers on the rickety wooden crate we use for a side table, I reach underneath the chair’s thick, orange cushion for my copy of Rituale Romanum—the official book of Catholic rituals. It’s this incredibly old book that contains all of the Catholic rituals and rites—baptism, penance, marriage. Near the very end of the book, past everything else, is a fifty-eight-page section on exorcism.
Exorcism is all very underground. It’s not like Uncle Roy advertises his services, but the people who need his help most always seem to find him anyway. Part of the reason why he’s so adamant about training me is that, according to him, the universe is unbalanced. There are way more demons than there are people who know how to expel them.
I don’t like to think about that too much.
I sink into the chair, the leather-bound book heavy on my lap. Rituale Romanum was originally published in the sixteen hundreds, but the rituals themselves go all the way back to the first century. The English-translated copy that I have is only about ten years old, though. It belonged to my mom. I found it in her room after she left for Italy.
I flip to the list of instructions. Twenty-one detailed directions on how to conduct an exorcism. I don’t need to read them; I know them by heart. The sight of the notes my mom has made in the margins—her tiny, cramped printing—makes my throat tighten. I have cried over this book so many times that the ink on the pages has started to run.
All these months later, I still can’t believe that she left without saying good-bye. She left and forgot about my existence as easily as my dad seemed to. And I know she was mad at me—we’d been fighting for weeks over really stupid stuff, like why it was always my job to unload the dishwasher, or why making dinner and cleaning the bathrooms was suddenly my responsibility, but I never expected her to drop out of my life.
I wish I could figure out what it is about me that makes me so easy to forget.
She’d seemed stressed for months—I think she was having trouble finding the balance between her job as a legal secretary and her exorcism work—and that made her snappier than usual. Instead of cutting her some slack and trying to understand what she was going through, I felt resentful. I was tired of always being at the bottom of her list and sick of the extra housework she kept heaping on me. After all, she wasn’t the only one with responsibilities.
Uncle Roy knew we weren’t getting along, of course. You couldn’t live in our house and not feel the tension. But he wasn’t home the night we had our biggest fight. He insists that it’s a coincidence that my mom left for some exorcism school I’d never heard of the very same night we had that terrible argument, but he didn’t hear the awful things I said to her. If he did, he wouldn’t be on my side.
I’ve sent my mom a hundred e-mails since that night. I call her cell phone every day, but all I get is her voice mail. She remains as impossible to reach as the moon. So all I can do is hope that she cools off soon and comes home.
I really need her to come home.
Chapter
4
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Vanessa and I walk past the boys’ lacrosse team warming up on the grass field. This isn’t our normal route home from school—we have to go out of our way to walk past the field—but Spencer is on the team, and I will take every chance I can get to see him in shorts.
I spot him right away, standing on the sidelines beside Coach Lee. Spencer’s wearing the team uniform, a navy-blue jersey with the number seventeen on the back and baggy blue shorts, but he’s not suited up in pads like the rest of the team.
“Spencer!” Vanessa calls, waving like a maniac and making a complete spectacle of herself. And, by association, of me.
“What are you doing?” I grab her hand and hold it down, even though it’s way too late because oh my God he’s already seen us. I feel my cheeks start to heat up. I was hoping to quietly admire Spencer from afar—I don’t want him to think that I deliberately came by to see him. Even though I did.
Vanessa rolls her eyes. “I’m trying to help move this along,” she says. “That boy is hot. You’d better get on it, Shelby, because the wolves are circling. Bex Wagner was all up in his personal space in bio yesterday.”
My stomach sinks. I could almost handle it if Vanessa had named any other senior girl, but, ugh, Bex Wagner is the worst. She is gorgeous, no debate, but she has a heinous personality. She’s the girl most likely to take your boyfriend. And she does. Frequently.
Vanessa is probably telling me this to force my hand. She knows how I feel about Bex. And I think my all-talk/no-action approach when it comes to Spencer is starting to drive her crazy.
Spencer says something to Coach Lee and then heads toward us. His dark hair is all messy, exactly the way I like it. As he closes the distance between us, I can see that he’s smiling, and my insides get all melty. If he only knew the power that smile holds over me.…
“You’re not playing?” Vanessa asks him when he’s finally standing in front of us.
He shakes his head. “Sitting this one out. I did something to my leg during practice yesterday.”
He’s not playing, but he’s still here supporting his team? God, I love him.
“What are you two up to?” he asks.
/> “Just on the way home,” I say. I have training in twenty minutes, and if I don’t hustle, I’m going to be late. And Uncle Roy isn’t a fan of lateness. I’ve learned that the hard way. One time, he made me write out the entire incantation in longhand twenty times all because I was five minutes late. Five minutes!
Spencer’s phone buzzes. He pulls it out of his pocket. Whatever he sees on the screen makes him tense up. He glances around the field, at his teammates gathered in a circle, the handful of people who have showed up to watch the game, the woman on the other side of the field digging in the recycling bin. My stomach tightens. I hope he’s not looking for Bex Wagner.
Vanessa elbows me. I know she wants me to say something, anything, that will show him I’m interested so he doesn’t ride off into the sunset with Bex, but I can’t seem to get any words out. My mouth is dry. I’m not usually tongue-tied around Spencer, but the sight of him in his lacrosse uniform is scrambling my brain.
The whistle blows. Frowning, he slides his phone back into his pocket. “I’d better get back,” he says. He reaches out and touches my arm. “See you tomorrow?”
I nod. We have a study session every Wednesday after school. Wednesdays have become my favorite day of the week. I live for Wednesdays.
“He touched your arm!” Vanessa says when Spencer’s barely out of earshot. “He didn’t touch Bex once in bio, and, trust me, with the way she was draped over him, that couldn’t have been easy.”
I’m not loving the mental image of Bex and her blond perfection all over Spencer, but it has to mean something that he resisted her charms. He’s probably the only boy that has ever managed to.
As I watch Spencer walk back to join his teammates, I decide that Vanessa is right—I need to do something about Spencer Callaghan.
* * *
“… inimícos meos confuses vidit óculos meus.” I can’t keep the smile off my face. I made it through the entire incantation with no prompting! There is no way Uncle Roy can find fault. For once, he has absolutely nothing to criticize.
I hold my hand out, waiting for him to slap my palm. But he just leans back in his chair, crosses his arms, and says, “Again.”
When Life Gives You Demons Page 2