“I don’t want any trouble,” the man says.
“We’re not here to make trouble,” Uncle Roy replies. “We’re here to prevent it.” The man strokes his beard, studying us. He seems to be making his mind up about something. Finally, he grunts and says, “Come with me.”
He leads us across the club, winding his way past a table filled with men in leather vests with red bandanas tied around their heads. They’re clearly a gang, the owners of the motorcycles parked out front. I accidentally make eye contact with one of them; he grins at me in a way that makes my skin crawl.
Those evil vibrations I mentioned earlier? El Diablo is full of them.
The man stops outside of the ladies’ room. “She’s been in there an awful long time,” he says. “If she’s plugged my toilet, I’m not going to be a happy camper.” He’s about to knock, but Uncle Roy grabs his hand before he can make contact with the door.
“Wait.” Uncle Roy removes the handcuffs from his pocket and gives them to me. “Shelby, as soon as we go in, check for anything we can cuff her to. Make sure it’s something secure, preferably something made of iron. The tap in the sink, maybe,” he says.
Iron is a magical substance that repels demons, for reasons I’ve long forgotten.
“What kind of sick game are you playing at?” the man asks, his eyes widening at the handcuffs. “Are you even a real priest?”
“I assure you, sir, I am indeed a priest,” Uncle Roy says. “And I’m just doing my job. Now, if you’ll kindly step aside.…”
The man clearly doesn’t know what to make of the situation, but Uncle Roy is so bossy that he moves out of the way. Uncle Roy grasps the large silver crucifix hanging around his neck, holding it out in front of him as he pushes open the door.
The smell of sulfur hits us like a wave. It’s so strong that it makes my eyes water. The man gags and claps his hand over his nose.
The bathroom is small, no bigger than a cell. The mirror above the rust-stained sink is cracked, like someone punched it, and the toilet is missing its seat.
There are no windows—and no Ms. C.
“Huh. She must have snuck out,” the man says from behind his hand.
But Uncle Roy has gone completely still. He slowly gazes up at the ceiling, and every hair on my body stands up. Suddenly I know, even without looking, that Ms. C is still in the room.
And, sure enough, when I find the courage to look upward, there she is, hanging upside down, directly above us, like something right out of a vampire movie.
“What the hell?” The man’s eyes bulge. “What is she on?”
“She’s not on anything. This woman is possessed,” Uncle Roy says, gesturing for my spray bottle.
“I told you, I don’t want no trouble!” The man makes a grab for the bottle. Obviously he’s not thinking clearly, because if he was, he’d know that not spraying her is going to cause way more trouble.
“Sir, you need to let us help her,” Uncle Roy says, holding the bottle out of his reach.
“Or what?” he snarls.
At that moment, Ms. C reaches down and lifts the man off the ground by his long dark hair. He screams, swatting at her with his meaty fists, but she holds him up as if he weighs no more than a sparrow.
“Or that,” Uncle Roy says.
Ms. C lets him go, and the man falls in a heap, a handful of his hair still in her hand. He crab-walks out of the bathroom, his eyes lit with terror.
Who’s the big, bad, scary guy now?
I laugh because, honestly? It’s funny. At least until Uncle Roy roughly nudges me out of the way.
“Stand back, please,” Uncle Roy says. He aims the spray bottle at Ms. C’s leg and fires. She screams as curls of steam rise off her shin and then drops to the ground, crouching like she’s about to pounce. Then she snarls, and her lips peel back to show her teeth. Her eyes are glowing and super-red. Her face is red, too, right in the spot where I squirted her with holy water earlier.
Yikes. I hope that isn’t permanent.
“Deus, audi oratiónem meam; áuribus pércipe verba oris mei,” Uncle Roy bellows, his voice echoing off the grungy tile walls.
As soon as he starts the incantation, Ms. C’s body contorts in a way that reminds me of those crazy talented acrobats in Cirque du Soleil. She practically does a cartwheel off the wall, and I can’t help but be impressed by how limber she is. I mean, she has to be at least thirty years old, but from the way she’s moving, she could probably medal in the Olympics.
“Nam supérbi insurréxerunt contra me…” Uncle Roy glances at me, an exasperated expression on his face.
What?
Oh, right. The handcuffs.
“… et violénti quæsierunt vitam meam.…” As he slowly moves closer to Ms. C, I scan the bathroom for something made of iron. The taps are chipped white porcelain, so that’s not great news. But I guess they’re going to have to do.
Ms. C scrambles to try to get away from us, but there’s really nowhere for her to go—she’s trapped between the sink and the toilet. I guess that bit of superhuman gymnastics took a lot out of her, because she’s starting to slow down, which is a good sign. It means that the demon is getting tired.
At this point I don’t think she has the strength to levitate, so the handcuffs are probably overkill, but Uncle Roy must want to make this a “teachable moment” because he gestures for me to move in on her.
“Grab her wrist,” he barks.
While Uncle Roy distracts her with the incantation, I clamp the handcuff over one of Ms. C’s bone-thin wrists. Her skin is burning up, but whether that’s from the hellfire burning inside of her or from her aerobic display, it’s impossible to know. Before I can attach the other end of the handcuffs to the tap, Ms. C starts to convulse. Her whole body gives one final, violent twist, then relaxes, like a marionette that’s just had its strings cut. The suddenness of the movement causes her to face-plant right into the toilet.
Her head.
Is in.
The toilet.
Oh my God.
I make a move to help her, but Uncle Roy holds up a finger, his way of telling me to wait. He watches Ms. C for a minute before walking over and poking her in the shoulder with his crucifix. Ms. C groans, but she doesn’t spontaneously combust, so it seems that the demon has officially been expelled.
Yay us!
Or yay Uncle Roy, anyway.
Ms. Caplan struggles to sit up. The ends of her hair are wet with toilet water.
“It’s okay, Ms. Caplan. It’s me, Shelby.”
“Shelby? What on earth…?” She squints at me. “Where are my glasses? I can’t see anything without my glasses.”
“Um, I’m not sure,” I say, thinking of how easily her glasses snapped underneath my loafer earlier.
“And what’s that awful smell?” Ms. C wrinkles her nose.
I don’t want to tell her that it’s her. I don’t want to freak her out any more than is necessary.
“It’s a long story,” I say, helping her to her feet.
I introduce her to Uncle Roy. He puts his arm around her, and we lead her, confused and unsteady, out of the bar and into the light.
Chapter
10
DROPPING MS. C off at home isn’t an option given the demon-wrecked state of her place, so Uncle Roy has convinced her that we should take her to her sister’s house. I’m sitting beside her in the back seat.
Uncle Roy’s just patiently explained the day’s events to her for the third time, but Ms. C seems to think he’s making it all up. Every time he says the word demon, she just shakes her head.
“I know it’s a lot to take in, Violet,” he says.
“But I don’t even believe in demons,” she replies, kneading her hands together. “I don’t believe in anything! I’m an atheist!”
Well, atheism doesn’t explain the graffiti all over her living room walls or how she was able to hang from the ceiling of that bathroom like a spider. It also doesn’t explain why she’s tea
ching at a Catholic school, but that’s a question for another day.
Ms. C’s face brightens. “Maybe I had a seizure.”
“Maybe we should just take her home,” I say to Uncle Roy.
He glares at me in the rearview mirror. “Shelby.”
“What?” She’d hardly be able to deny that something evil was up when she saw the ax sticking out of her kitchen table.
Ms. C turns to face me. She obviously can’t see anything without her glasses, because although she’s looking in my direction, her eyes are unfocused and it’s pretty clear that she’s not really seeing me. Now that the demon is gone, the burns on her face have disappeared, so she’s back to normal. Ish.
“Tell me again why I can’t go home,” she says, sounding suspicious.
I’ve already told her why six times, but Uncle Roy claims that short-term memory loss is completely normal after a possession, so I’m trying my best to be patient with her.
“Your house needs to be fumigated,” I say. This is not really a lie; Uncle Roy does need to give the house a serious spiritual cleansing before she can live there again.
Ms. C doesn’t ask how on earth I know that her house needs to be fumigated. Hopefully by the time she returns to her senses, she won’t remember this conversation. Or my role in any of this, for that matter.
Uncle Roy turns onto a wide, tree-lined street. Ms. Caplan points out her sister’s house, a huge white Victorian with a lawn the size of a postage stamp. Uncle Roy instructs me to stay put. He helps Ms. C climb out of the car. Her legs are still pretty shaky, so he slides his arm around her and walks her up to the front door.
Ms. Caplan’s sister opens the door. I can’t imagine what Uncle Roy is telling her to explain why they’re on her doorstep, but whatever it is, from the concerned look on her face, it’s clear that she buys it. She wraps an arm around Ms. C’s shoulders and leads her inside.
I’m so tired. This day has kicked my butt. I let my eyes drift shut for a moment, and I must fall asleep, because the next time I open my eyes, we’re in front of Ms. C’s house.
“You’re going to do the cleansing now?” I ask, yawning. Uncle Roy’s been exhausted after exorcisms lately, so I figured he’d want a break before he tackled chasing the evil spirits out of Ms. C’s place.
“Yes,” he says. “I’ll be doing that while you put her house back in order.”
I sit up, suddenly wide-awake. “In order? As in clean up?”
He smiles tightly. “Who did you think was going to do it?”
I guess I never thought about it.
Silly me.
* * *
Three hours later, Ms. C’s house is almost back to normal. Or what we assume is normal—maybe Ms. C is a slob who never does her dishes. In that case, we’ve just given her free housekeeping services.
I haul the last of the four trash bags filled with downy white stuffing from the decorative pillows in her bedroom down the stairs. Uncle Roy is in the living room, talking to a man in paint-splattered jeans.
The man stares uneasily at the graffiti on the wall. “You’re going to need at least two coats of primer to cover that.”
“Fine,” Uncle Roy says. “Can you match the yellow?”
The painter nods. “I think I can get pretty close.”
We are trying to put Ms. C’s place back together as closely as possible, but there are some things that just can’t be fixed, like her coffee table. I swept up the glass, and we carried the broken metal legs out to Uncle Roy’s car—which is now filled with garbage, because apparently we can’t leave twenty Hefty bags on the curb.
The painter heads out to his van to get his supplies. I don’t know how Uncle Roy found him so quickly. I feel guilty that he’s paying for it out of his own pocket, but honestly, I don’t think I could have faced painting all night.
I drop the trash bag of pillow fluff near the door and plunk down onto the couch. Uncle Roy has fixed duct tape over the claw marks. If the couch fit in his car, I’d suggest we take it to the dump.
“Are we done? I’m exhausted.”
“You know who’s not exhausted?” Uncle Roy says, leaning down to remove his flask of holy water from his doctor’s bag. “The devil.”
I groan and let my head flop against the back of the couch. “Can’t we have one conversation that doesn’t revolve around demons?”
“When we get rid of them, we can talk about anything you like,” he says, uncapping the flask. He walks around the room, sprinkling holy water in every corner.
I cross my arms. While I’m glad that we helped Ms. C, there will always be someone who needs us, and the responsibility of that makes me feel weighted down. No matter what Uncle Roy says, we will never get rid of all the demons, ever, because they are everywhere and always have been. And they always will be.
And suddenly it all just feels like too much.
“Maybe we need to take a few days off,” I say.
Uncle Roy frowns, his eyebrows gathering together in the middle of his forehead like a long white caterpillar. “Shelby, you know that even a single day can make a difference.”
My face heats up. I know he’s referring to Peter Satterley and what happened to him.
“If anything, we’re in even greater demand now.” He turns around and shakes holy water near the entrance to the room. “There’s a particularly nasty demon that’s been causing a lot of havoc lately.” His back is to me, so I can’t read his expression, but his voice sounds strange. “I believe the possessed individual is a portal to the underworld.”
My stomach drops. I didn’t even know that was possible. “Like a doorway for other demons to come through?”
He nods. “There are several known portals across the Pacific Northwest,” he says. “Physical locations that have been cordoned off to keep the public from accidentally stumbling across them. However, this is the first case I’ve come across where the portal is an actual person.”
“What does that mean?”
He turns around to face me. His expression is grave. “It means that unless we can find a way to stop it, the city will soon be overrun by demons.”
I stare at him, wide-eyed. “And you never mentioned this before because…?”
“I wasn’t entirely sure until recently.” He bends down to slip his flask of holy water back into his doctor’s bag. “And I didn’t want to worry you.”
He didn’t want to worry me? It’s a little late for that.
“So how does this portal work, exactly?” I ask.
Uncle Roy grimaces. “Through touch,” he says. “If this person grabs on to someone for more than a minute or two, then a conduit is created. The demonic spirit can travel through that person and into the other body.”
I fold my hands together to keep them from shaking, trying to fight down the tide of panic rising inside of me. “There are, like, hundreds of priests in Seattle. Some of them must be willing to help us.”
“Not all of them do exorcisms,” he says. “And, quite frankly, the other priests I’ve approached don’t believe that it’s possible for a portal to be a person. I’m fairly certain that they think I’m losing my mind.”
I sit up, indignant. Uncle Roy may be old, but his mind is still sharp. If he believes this person is a portal, then they’re a portal.
“Then we’ll just have to take care of it ourselves,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Shelby, I told you this so you would understand the seriousness of the situation,” he says. “But this is something you can’t help me with.”
I open my mouth to argue—exactly how does he expect to tackle a demon portal on his own?—but he cuts me off.
“It’s not up for discussion,” he says.
I scowl at him. Okay, I know Ms. C’s exorcism didn’t go according to plan, but what’s the point of training me if he doesn’t think I can help him?
He glances around the room. “I think our work here is done,” he says, picking up his doctor’s bag.
I sta
nd up. The place looks a lot better than when we arrived, but there’s no way Ms. C will be able to ignore the missing coffee table or the duct tape holding her couch together. And there’s no way I can ignore the growing feeling that, no matter what Uncle Roy says, we are in way over our heads.
* * *
Uncle Roy may have meant the work in Ms. C’s house was done, but I still have to write the report on her exorcism. It’s after eleven, and I’m so tired that my eyelids keep drooping shut, but I’m in the rectory, trying to commit everything that happened today to paper.
… I started the incantation, and I almost had her, but then Ms. C jumped out of the window!!! There is no way I could have predicted she’d do that. NO ONE could have predicted she’d do that, even if that person has done a thousand exorcisms and thinks they know everything there is to know about demons.
I sneak a glance at Uncle Roy. He’s leaning back in his chair, eyes closed, his face as pale as the moon. Maybe it’s just because he’s relaxed, but it kind of looks like someone let all the air out of him.
Looking at him gives me a swoopy feeling in my stomach. I know Uncle Roy’s a thousand years old, but if something were to happen to him, if he got sick …
There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s fine.
Still, I make a mental note to get all of the superfoods into his diet. Maybe there’s a way I can disguise quinoa in brownies or something.
Moo must know I’m worried, because she snuggles deeper into my lap. Her soft, solid body and the motor-like sound of her purr reassure me. I push aside the bad thoughts and refocus my attention on the paper in front of me.
It’s another half hour before I scribble my signature across the bottom of the page. It’s not my best work, for sure, and I know I’ve given Uncle Roy plenty to pick at, but my fingers are cramping and I can’t think of anything else to add.
I scratch Moo behind one ear and set her gently on the floor. I walk over and drop the report on the desk in front of Uncle Roy. Without even opening his eyes, he takes off the key he wears around his neck, the one that unlocks the filing cabinet, and hands it to me. I’m surprised because he always reads the reports before he files them, and he always puts them away himself, but I guess he’s too tired tonight. Either that, or he thinks I can handle the responsibility and is starting to loosen the reigns.
When Life Gives You Demons Page 6