A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel (21 page)

Father Wanderly read the first of three gospel lessons.

“Maybe we should spice it up, and because Ken is such a big fan of H. P. Lovecraft, I can be Azathoth: the demon sultan, the nucleus of infinity. No one dares speak my name out loud and I feast in the impenetrably dark chambers beyond time and space. Rawr!” She thrashed and wiggled about in her restraints, and the carefully tucked comforter slid down, away from her arms and away from her chin and pooled around her midsection. “I am the dead dreamer, older than sin, older than humanity. I am the shadow below everything. I am the beautiful thing that awaits us all.

“Hey, Merry, that reminds me. I miss your books. You don’t bring me your books anymore. I miss writing and making up stories for you. Do you miss my stories?”

I wanted to answer her, though I knew I wasn’t supposed to interact with her in any way. She looked over at me and her face flashed disappointment when I didn’t say anything. So I nodded my head, just slightly, so only she could see it.

Father Wanderly did not engage her in discussion but continued to read his gospels. He droned on without any change in pitch or timbre. I couldn’t tell if he was listening to her or not. His head and neck glistened with sweat.

“I’m cold again. Can you pull up the blanket again? Sorry, I’ll try not to move around so much.”

Father Gavin didn’t wait for permission. He swooped in and pulled up the comforter, this time wrapping and tucking the corners under her arms and shoulders.

Fingers snapped somewhere behind me, and then Jenn the camerawoman crept up in front of Mom, Dad, and me, toward the headboard for a hard close-up.

Father Wanderly crossed himself and made the sign of the cross over Marjorie again, slow and deliberate. He picked up one corner of his purple stole and draped it across Marjorie’s neck. She strained to look down at it. He placed his other hand on her forehead and gently pushed her head back into the pillow.

Marjorie smiled and said, “Your hand is warm. Make sure you say the rest in accents filled with confidence and faith, like it says in your book.”

Father Wanderly nearly shouted his prayers, and Dad eagerly shouted back the responses. I didn’t turn around but he must’ve been on his knees because he was shouting in my ears. I covered them with hands and fingers that hurt they were so cold. I wanted to leave that room, that house, and I had a brief runaway fantasy where I ran away to California, which I’d never been to, to where all the Bigfoots were, and I’d disappear into the woods and live alone, become a rumor, an occasional blurred sighting.

Father Wanderly filled himself up and shouted, “Let us pray.” Then, shaking, voice breaking, he asked that he would be “granted help against the unclean spirit now tormenting this creature of God’s.” He traced the sign of the cross on her brow three times.

Marjorie said, “I’m not a creature. I’m—I’m Marjorie, a fourteen-year-old girl, scared of everything, who doesn’t know why she hears voices that tell her confusing things. And I try to be good and I try. Try not to listen to them.” She paused in places where there weren’t supposed to be pauses and she stumbled over the words like she’d forgotten her lines
she hadn’t spent enough time memorizing. Marjorie was suddenly unconvincing. Unlike when Father Wanderly and Dr. Navidson had previously interviewed her, it didn’t feel like she was in danger, and it didn’t feel like she was a danger to us.

An emboldened Father Wanderly said that Marjorie was “caught up in the fearsome threats of man’s ancient enemy, sworn foe of our race, who befuddles and stupefies the human mind, throws it into terror, overwhelms it with fear and panic.”

Marjorie asked, “Are you scared and confused like I am?” Her voice was as small as I’d ever heard it. “I think everyone is secretly like me.”

Father Wanderly asked that this servant be protected in mind and body. He folded down the blanket and traced the cross on Marjorie’s chest, over her heart.

“What are you doing? Why is he touching me there?” Marjorie twitched and arched her back against the restraints, trying to avoid the priest’s touch. The rest of the blanket slumped off the side of the bed.

Jenn retreated a few steps back from the headboard, toward the newly plastered wall with its heavy pewter crucifix. Jesus peeked out over her shoulder and she kept her camera pointed at Marjorie like it was a gun.

Father Wanderly traced the sign of the cross above her heart twice more, and said, “Keep watch over the innermost recesses of her heart; rule over her emotions; strengthen her will. Let vanish from her soul the temptings of the mighty adversary.”

Marjorie turned and looked at Mom, with a look that said: You’re letting him do
that
to me? Mom couldn’t return the look.

Father Wanderly paused to drink from a bottle of water he’d placed on Marjorie’s desk.

Marjorie said, “This isn’t working,” and she sounded so far away, so lost inside herself. “You know, I thought I’d play along and that it couldn’t
hurt, but you’re making everything worse.” Her voice broke and she started shivering again.

I looked down at my feet, feeling guilty, but I wasn’t sure about what. I guess I had to blame myself to have something to hold on to.

Mom must’ve felt the same way. She said, “I’m sorry, honey. This is all my fault.”

Dad whispered a prayer.

Father Wanderly drank deeply from the water bottle. When he put the bottle back down, the middle desk draw sprang open. Still covered by the white cloth, that desk’s ghostly tongue protruded out into the room toward Father Wanderly, and then slammed itself shut.

Marjorie yelled, “What was that? That’s not me! That’s not me! I didn’t do that! What’s happening?” She tried to sit up and she spun her head wildly left, right, then left again, looking accusatorily at everyone.

The wind gusted outside, whistling through the window frame, fluttering the curtains and the candle flames. The desk drawer continued opening and closing as regularly as the ticks of a metronome.

Father Wanderly shouted, “He now flails you with His divine scourges!”

“What do you mean? I didn’t do anything. Don’t blame me for that. Mom, Dad, help me! I don’t know what’s happening!”

Mom and Dad were shouting now too. Dad shouted Jesus Christ’s name; Mom shouted Marjorie’s name. Mom pulled me over to her, held me in front of her like I was a shield.

Father Wanderly: “He in whose sight you and your legions once cried out: ‘What have we to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Have you come to torture us before the time?’”

There was a loud banging sound from underneath Marjorie’s bed, like something was trying to ram up through the floor.

Marjorie screamed and my parents went quiet. She said, “Who’s doing this? Stop it! What I’m doing and saying isn’t enough for you? Everything I’ve done isn’t enough for you? I’m scared and I’m cold and I want to stop. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”

Father Wanderly continued. “Now He is driving you back into the everlasting fire.”

Father Gavin quickly scurried to the bed and bent down at Father Wanderly’s feet to gather the comforter.

Marjorie cried hysterically, her chest heaving. “I’m so cold. Please stop banging. Please, Father. I’m so cold. Can we stop? Take a break? I’ll stop too. Make them stop. Make them stop . . .”

Father Gavin quickly readjusted the comforter and pulled it up to her chin again.

Father Wanderly: “Begone, now! Begone, seducer! Your place is in solitude. . . .”

Marjorie shot her head forward and clamped her teeth onto Father Gavin’s meaty and hairy wrist. He let out such a high-pitched scream it made my knees wobble. He tried to extract himself by lifting his arm over his head, but he only got it halfway up. Marjorie still held on with her teeth. The large sleeves of his tunic slid down past his elbow. Blood leaked from the sides of her mouth and ran down his arm. Father Gavin screamed for God to help him. Dad rushed past me and, along with Father Wanderly, stepped in and tried to separate Marjorie and the younger priest, and separate them they did, but slowly. Dad pulled Marjorie back and her mouthful of flesh was still tethered to Father Gavin’s arm by a thin rope of skin that stretched out like taffy. Father Wanderly pushed the younger priest off the bed and that spaghetti strand tore down the entire length of his forearm, all the way to his elbow.

Dad and Father Wanderly fell on top of Father Gavin, who thrashed around on the floor as though he were having a seizure. Father Wanderly was knocked backward and he rolled into my ankles. He held his left shoulder with a shaky right hand and his eyes were closed against the pain.

Dad worked to pin down the younger priest so Jenn—she’d abandoned her camera—could wrap the man’s bleeding arm in his billowy tunic sleeve. The sleeve quickly turned a dark red, almost purple. And I know it’s probably a faulty or cross-wired memory, but Dad was wild-eyed, his teeth bared; he wore the same expression he had before he assaulted the protester.

Marjorie slid as close as she could to the edge of her bed. Her mouth was red and full. She breathed in quickly through her nose, and I knew she was going to spit so I turned away. I didn’t want to see what came out. I heard a wet splat hit the hardwood floor, though, and my stomach flipped. When I looked up again, Marjorie sat up and hopped out of bed like the restraints were loose, weren’t tied, weren’t ever there.

She ran over to her desk and flipped up the end of the white sacramental cloth, which sent statues of Mary and a candelabra and its burning candles crashing to the floor. She yanked opened the stubbornly sentient desk drawer and sent it crashing to the floor, spilling the contents everywhere. She reached down and picked up something black and metallic that sort of looked like an opened-up stapler, but I didn’t get a great look at it. She held it over her head, waved it around, and screamed, “See? See? It was
this
! The drawer wasn’t me,” and then threw it at the window behind her. “Why would you do this to me? Did you put it there, Merry? Did they make you put it there when I wasn’t looking?” She wiped the back of her sleeve over her bloody mouth.

I screamed, “No! I didn’t do anything! I—” But I stopped and covered my
own mouth. I saw the blood on her face and on her sweatshirt and I was afraid, so afraid that she would make good on her old promise to rip out my tongue. There, in that freezing meat locker of a room with its coppery, sweet smell of candle wax and blood, and with screams, groans, and breathless prayers echoing off the walls, all I could think was that my tongue and I were next, and that everyone was wrong about everything.

Mom was behind me, on the floor weeping, her knuckles white from her hands being clenched together so tightly. She said, “Marjorie, you promised. You promised no one would get hurt if Merry was here.”

The door opened behind us and an EMT rushed into the room and tended to Father Gavin.

Marjorie said, “No I didn’t. That’s not what I said. Check the tape.” Her voice sounded funny, like all her teeth had gone all loose and wiggly so the words slipped and fell out between them.

Dad leapt past the EMT, Jenn, and Father Wanderly as they slowly helped Father Gavin shuffle away from Marjorie and to the side of the room. Dad wrapped his arms around Marjorie’s waist. Marjorie pulled the desk drawer off the floor and hit him in the head with it. Dad let go and fell away.

Marjorie looked at me and said, “I said someone would get hurt bad if Merry wasn’t here. But I never said what would happen if she
was
here. In fact, I thought I already told you all that everyone was going to die.”

I yelled, “Stop it, you faker! You told me you were faking! You liar! I hate you! I hate you so much! I wish you were dead.”

I turned to run and bumped into Barry. He didn’t try to stop me. I pushed him out of the way, opened the door, and ran out. The heat in the hallway was dizzying and my glasses fogged up instantly so I couldn’t see where I was going. I took them off and stuffed them into my pocket. Behind me, in Marjorie’s room, there was more yelling and there were
loud thumps and crashes like everything inside was imploding, falling apart.

Marjorie yelled after me, “Merry?” and it sounded like she was in the hallway right behind me.

I didn’t turn around. I took a hard right and ran down the stairs. I ran too fast, trying to jump two stairs at time and I tripped and twisted my ankle on the second landing and stumbled down to the next, crashing onto my hands and knees. I scrambled back onto my feet and limped down the last section of stairs to the front foyer.

Ken was there with Tony the cameraman. Tony’s camera was perched on his shoulder like a black bird and he dropped down to one knee so that he was down at my height and the lens pointed in my face. Ken wouldn’t look at me, so I wouldn’t look at him. I had a staring contest with the camera instead. I breathed through my nose and I didn’t blink.

Ken said, “Jesus . . .”

Tony slowly panned the camera up above my head. I turned around. Marjorie was on the staircase, just a few steps below the second floor, leaning on the banister railing.

She’d untied her hair and let it dangle in front of her face. She bobbed her head back and forth, swinging her dark hair like a clock’s pendulum. I could see her eyes. I remember seeing her eyes and seeing what they saw.

Mom and Dad yelled for Marjorie. They had to be out in the hallway, maybe a few steps behind her. Marjorie didn’t react to them. She calmly said to me, “Stay there, Merry. We’re almost done.”

Marjorie yelled, “Wait for me!” and jumped and pushed up and off the railing with her hands, as though she were playing leapfrog. Her hair bounced away from her face. Her mouth was open, so were her eyes, and I remember her there, over and beyond the railing, hanging in the air, in empty space, time frozen like a snapshot.

She was
there
and she’s been there in my mind ever since.
There
is in the air, past the railing, and above the foyer.

I turned around and covered my eyes with my cold hands. I was afraid to watch her fall, and I was afraid if I watched she wouldn’t fall, that she actually wasn’t falling.