Then it seemed that fate intervened on her behalf. She was flipping through the channels late one night and she happened to catch an infomercial. It was a crusade that a guy who called himself The Miracle Man was performing. It showed people being healed and people being granted financial freedom. She also witnessed testimonials from people who had attended the shows and received any other idiotic thing they’d asked for.
Blair figured most of these people were paid actors and that it was all a scam, but something about the way that man touched people and the way the people responded to him was just so amazing. She wasn’t sure she believed it at all but, for whatever reason, she found herself wanting to believe so badly that she was willing to accept it in the frame of mind that she was in at that moment. When you are at rock bottom you will grasp at anything that might get you closer to the light.
At the end of the show it listed all of the upcoming tour dates. In just one week The Miracle Man was coming to Phoenix, her hometown. She decided that she had to go. There was nothing else for her. This was her last chance to get some guidance and to feel something in her life. She doubted that he could help her with her particular problem, but she had to try. She made a mental note of when it was and she lay back on the couch and had a good cry.
A week later she went to the show and her life changed forever. The last thing she remembered from entering the building to waking up at home in her bed was the woman who had checked her in. The woman was strikingly beautiful and she had taken an expressed interest in Blair. She remembered walking down a long hall and then being led into a big room.
After that it was all bits and pieces that came to her in confusing dreams for days afterwards. She kept getting these little snapshots of The Miracle Man chanting over her and a blurry image in the background of a couple of women tied to large tables screaming. But it didn’t make sense. Had she been tied to a table? She could not remember.
A few weeks later she started getting the morning sickness. When she went to her doctor she discovered that she was pregnant. She remembered driving home in a daze. She was too shocked to even be properly happy for several days. The reality of being pregnant finally started to hit home about a week later and the happiness took over her life.
She was amazed beyond comprehension about what had happened. It had to be The Miracle Man show. There was no other explanation. She had not been with anybody for quite a while. There was no other way that conception could have happened.
How had they known? She didn’t even go to the actual show. Did she? Was she really there? She couldn’t remember. She had no idea how she got home or why she felt so filthy. She felt sticky and soiled for some reason. She had taken a thirty minute shower and she still felt dirty. It was strange to say the least.
But then the morning sickness and the nonstop cramping had started. She had spoken to her doctor at length about it and he had assured her that it was normal and that some women experienced it violently while others hardly at all. Everybody was different.
It had gotten so bad that even though she worked from home, she had to take a leave of absence. She was running out of time on that and she might not have a job when it was all said and done, but she had a bit in savings, so she was getting along financially OK for a while. Blair had always been pretty frugal and she’d had no problem living within her means.
The doctor thought her cheap, highly processed diet of pasta and canned foods might have been part of the reason for the nausea, so she had started eating healthier whole foods, despite the price increase, but it had not helped at all.
Blair put the kettle on to boil and grabbed a tea cup from the cupboard. She retrieved a few packets of sugar and sat down to wait on the water to reach the boiling point. She looked all around the room and wondered if it was watching.
In the past few weeks the weird occurrences had started happening. At first Blair had paid it no mind and she figured that it was all in her head from the stress of being pregnant, but then the occurrences had become more and more disturbing. The first thing she had started noticing was objects moving around by themselves. She never saw them actually moving through the air, but she would sit down a paperback book or a cup of tea and go to the bathroom. When she came back it would be in the kitchen instead of the living room where she had just left it.
Then the pranks had escalated to loud raps and knocks on the walls late into the night. She thought it was the house settling until she realized that that was impossible from what she was hearing. The thumps always came in groups of threes and they seemed to be coming louder and in a very specified rhythm, as if coming slowly down the hall for her. This had led to many sleepless nights and many nights where she was almost afraid to be in her own home.
She began to wonder if her house was haunted and had started doing research on the subject. There were several so called paranormal groups in her area, but she had always thought those people were complete frauds. But if they could help her with her little problem then she was all ears. But first she was hoping that she could take care of the problem herself.
From what she had read the disturbance sounded like Poltergeist phenomena. All the information pointed to poltergeists as “prankster” ghosts. They moved objects, made noise, and all round tried to drive you crazy, but they rarely physically attacked you. That was a huge relief off Blair’s mind, but she thought she might get some professional help.
But in the meantime she thought that she would try to ignore the whole thing. According to most of the literature and the videos she had seen poltergeists fed on human energy and fear. If she ignored them the activity might stop altogether. She decided to give this a try. Blair had far too much on her mind to deal with some stupid ghost who was bored.
Blair fixed herself some pasta and watched television until about eleven. For whatever reason at this time every night she became overwhelmed with sleepiness. She headed up to bed anxious about vomiting the next morning.
Blair awoke from a strange dream when she realized that she was not in her bed. In fact she was face to face with the ceiling. Her breath caught in her throat as she tried to scream. Her voice was weak and whiny as she tried to catch her breath and force the air to flow into her lungs, but it was like being trapped in a whirlwind of air that had taken all of the oxygen from the room to fuel itself.
She was being moved away from the space over her bed until there was now just floor space beneath her. Her body was twisting and turning around so that she was now face to face with the floor several feet below her. She realized what was going to happen and she tried to plead, but she was instantly slammed face down on the floor. The hard floor crashed into her face sending pain roaring through her entire body. Her skull felt like it had been fractured.
But she wasn’t done yet. She was jerked back up to the ceiling and then slammed down on the floor like a basketball again and again, her body bouncing several feet upward every time she hit the floor. The pain was unreal and no matter how hard she willed her body to lose consciousness she remained awake. Blair feared for the life of her child. What if this killed it? What would she do? What could she do to minimize the risk? She was being beaten by a supernatural force; there was nothing she could do but wait.
What was it? What did it want? Why was it trying to kill her?
Those last thoughts echoed in her brain as her body landed on the floor one last time. Her body felt broken. It felt as if there was not one bone spared from the wrath of this beast. The pain was by far the worst thing she had ever experienced. She didn’t know what had really just happened. Her mind was feeling very muddy and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold on.
And she was surprised that she was still conscious. How could she stand such a thing?
Her night gown was being ripped from her body. She instinctively grabbed for the fabric, but her hands were suddenly pinned to the floor. She could not move. It felt like there was a huge weight on her back, pinning her down while she remained at the merc
y of this creature.
Then the cuts started. She felt a sharp knife scratching slowly up and down her back in short little stabbing motions. She screamed as loud as she could until her lungs felt like they might explode. The pain she had been feeling was mere background noise now.
The sticky, thick blood flowed down her back, trickling and oozing over the other wounds like salt. The cuts continued, faster now. It was like someone was just trying to see how many cuts they could fit on the human body. She tried to turn her head to see what was being used to inflict so much pain and misery on her body, but she couldn’t move a muscle. It felt like six pairs of hands were holding her down.
Then the stabbing began.
Chapter Two
The pain was agonizing.
It was sharp, searing pain in the middle of her back going deep like a knife being slammed into her flesh and twisted with every thrust of death. There was no air left in her lungs for her to scream. She was going to be killed. She knew that. There was no way she was going to survive this. She stopped struggling because it was all so futile.
Blair closed her eyes and waited for the end to consume her. The pain was so extreme that she could not help but try to scream, but nothing came out of her mouth except a croaking sound catching in her throat. Her entire body was shaking at the force of the blows behind the sharp stabbing feeling that was happening all over her body. She felt the blood spilling out of her as the world began to turn black.
That’s when she heard the laughter. It was a dark, guttural sound that did not sound the least bit human. It was harsh and evil sounding. It was sadistic to the extreme and she knew that it was not any normal ghost. There was something completely inhuman about this entity.
It was a demon. She was sure of it. She was being murdered by a demon just like the videos she had watched on YouTube. She had not believed that this sort of thing really happened to people. In fact Blair had never believed in anything supernatural before all of this started happening to her. That may have been why she was reluctant to get help or to contact any of the ghost hunters that she had found. There were several in her area, but she had drug her feet on calling any of them.
Now she was going to pay the ultimate price.
The stabbing pains were getting harder and faster. Basically she felt like she was being beaten with the blade of a knife accompanied by a fist right behind it that was thudding her insides, tearing her apart. She had no idea how she was still awake or why she was not dead yet. There must have been over twenty stab wounds on her body and the count was rising as the pain continued.
Then it was over.
The pain was gone. The blood on her back was gone. She could move and her body instinctively pulled itself into a little ball.
She took several deep breaths as she tried to comprehend what had happened to her. Looking around the room frantically she didn’t see anything at all. There was no blood on the floor as there had been just seconds ago and there was no blood on her body either.
Blair stood to her feet slowly, expecting her body to be bruised and broken from the vicious beating she had just endured, but she was fine. There was no pain and as far as she could tell there was not a scratch on her. It had all been an illusion. The pain was not real. But the psychological pain would never leave her. She had endured her own vicious murder without being really harmed. That was what the demon wanted. It wanted to terrorize her. It wanted her mind and her sanity.
Blair walked into the bathroom and looked at her body. It was free from bruises, scratches, and blood. There was no evidence that she had been attacked at all. It was almost like the whole thing was a crazy dream that she was unable to awake from. But it had been no dream. She knew that she had felt every single act of being murdered by a vicious stabbing and that she’d been slammed from ceiling to the floor repeatedly.
She had to get help. She had to get out of the house.
But she had nowhere to go. She didn’t really know what she would do if she left. Would the demon follow her? What she had read about demons was that they didn’t possess houses or objects; they attached themselves to and possessed people. Was it trying to possess her? She needed to do more research. She needed some help.
Blair quickly put on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. The clock said it was almost six in the evening. She had slept for almost nineteen hours. She had never slept that much before in her life. What the hell was happening here?
She needed to be out of the house. Maybe she could stay at her friend Jane’s for tonight? But would she be putting her in danger too? Oh, God. What was she to do here? She knew that it would follow her and that anyone she came into contact with was going to be in mortal danger as well.
Maybe she would stay in a hotel and see if that helped. She was not going to feel comfortable sleeping in her own home tonight.
Ding dong!
There was someone at her door. She wasn’t expecting company and it was too late for salesmen or religious groups to be showing up.
The doorbell rang again.
Blair jogged to the door, her legs feeling stiff and crampy. She wanted to sit down and rest so badly. The ordeal she had just been through had taken a lot out of her and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could even stay awake.
She answered the door and was stunned to find a group of women standing there. Two of them were obviously pregnant, there was an older woman who looked like a reject from the sixties and two other women she did not recognize. Blair was not expecting to see a group of people at her door at this hour. She wondered where they had been minutes ago when she was being stabbed to death by a demon.
“Hello?” Blair said. She could hear the confusion and the pain in her own voice. Her throat still felt raw from the screaming she had tried to do. Her solar plexus felt like she had just spent the entire day sneezing too hard.
“Blair?” The hippie woman said. “We know what is happening to you. We are here to help.”
Blair felt like she was going to faint. A current of nausea and dizziness moved across her mind and body.
Twenty minutes later they were all sitting around her kitchen table drinking tea. The older woman in the tie-dye’s name was Gail Woodyard. She explained that she was a clairvoyant and then she told the story of Kira and Jessica and what was going on. Blair sat and sipped her tea, wondering how the hell this was real and how the hell it had happened to her. Apparently she and the other two women were all part of some mystical experiment conducted by The Miracle Man, who was an instrument of the Devil. He had made a deal with the Devil for unlimited power if he would curse these three women with children that would bring about the end of days. One of the kids would be the Antichrist and the other two would be his closest allies in the war against God and God’s people. It all sounded like a crazy Stephen King novel or something, but Blair knew that Gail and the other women were telling her the truth.
After Gail finished her story Blair told them what had just happened to her. Apparently the other women were being terrorized by demons as well. The other two women were already marked by The Beast, which meant that the demon had attached itself to them and their babies. It was all up to her to stop it. She had not allowed the demon to completely break her down. She had been ignoring it trying to keep it from getting stronger and from having any effect on her. By doing this she was doing the right thing, according to Gail.
“It felt pretty strong when it just tried to murder me a few minutes ago,” Blair said.
“That was not real. It was just an illusion. It might have hurt you worse if it had been attached to you in any way. Right now it was just throwing a tantrum and hoping to break you down. This is the first attack of many. It will continue to get stronger if you show fear or give into it in any way. You are doing the right thing,” Gail said. She sipped her tea casually.
“I was debating leaving just now when you guys showed up.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t. It would show it that what it did scared you and tha
t you are starting to let it control you. Besides it would just follow you no matter where you go.”
“So how do we beat this thing? There is a way, right?” Blair asked.
“Yes, but it is not perfect; in fact it may not even work.”
“Great. I love to hear confidence in a plan,” Blair said.
“It’s all we’ve got. And it’s better than waiting for it to attack again,” Jessica said.
“Right. I didn’t believe any of this stuff either, but I do know that something crazy is happening. If what all three of you say happened to you really did happen then I say we go with what Gail says to do. She has been right every step of the way so far,” Janie said.
“I’m sorry. I’m just a bit thrown with all this stuff that is going on. I’m really glad you are all here. It feels better not being alone and especially to be with people who understand what is going on. I feel pretty lucky there,” Blair said.
“We are glad we got to you in time,” Kira said. “You are our last hope.”
“Right, if the demon had bridged the gap and completed the attachment then there might be no stopping any of them,” Gail said.
“I can’t believe that there are three separate demons. I’m having enough trouble wrapping my head around one.”
“It has been planned since the beginning of time. It is crazy to me that Satan has picked now to begin his rise to the Earth,” Gail said.
“Why does that surprise you?”
Thriller: Horror: Conceived (Mystery Suspense Thrillers) (Haunted Paranormal Short Story) Page 8