Exorcist Road (7 page)

“Let…me…go!”
Sutherland grunted as he struggled with the creature. None of the priest’s normal self-possession remained. Whether it was the shock of being seized or the fear of having his deepest secrets revealed that had done it, the panic Sutherland now exhibited frightened me worse than anything had thus far.

I joined in the struggle, but in moments the creature relinquished his hold on Sutherland. Both of us stumbled a little from this abrupt release, and at once Sutherland contrived to usher me from the room.

“Don’t go, Father!” the creature said in the same wheedling growl it reserved for its most scathing taunts. “Don’t leave before you tell the eunuch here about your little hobby!”

I paused six feet from the door. Sutherland bade me continue forward, but I turned and listened as the creature said, “Told the diocese you wanted your own home for privacy and learning, didn’t you, Sutherland? How astonished they would be to find the souvenirs you’ve hidden under the floorboard of your study!”

“What’s he talking about?” I asked.

“Lies,” Sutherland said, dragging me toward the door.

“What souvenirs?” I asked, and the creature on the bed began to cackle.

“Wants to know what his hero’s been up to!”
the demon laughed.
“Wants to see the little ladies’ keepsakes!”

“What keepsakes?” I shouted as Sutherland hauled me out of the room and slammed the door behind us.

“What’s he talking about?” I demanded.

“He’s planting doubt in you, Father Crowder.” He patted his forehead with his purple stole. “Frankly, I’m astonished you were taken in so easily.”

“But who was he talking about? What little ladies?”

“There
are
no little ladies, don’t you see? He wants to divide us, for together we are invulnerable. You saw how we subdued the demon with Scripture. You bore witness to the power of faith.”

“Why were you so afraid to touch him?” I asked, aware now that Liz had materialized beside me. She looked frazzled and drawn, but there was a vitality in her eyes that I admired. My attention, however, was on Sutherland.

As if to himself, Sutherland said, “We’ve been rash.”

“Father?” I asked. “Why were you so afraid to touch Casey?”

“It isn’t Casey,” he said, teeth bared. “Can’t you see that? It’s a pestilence. A foul intelligence whose only skill is duplicity. It’s using the terrible scandals associated with the clergy to induce doubt in your mind. Is your opinion of me so deplorable?”

“But it was so specific.”

He flapped a dismissive hand. “This is absurd.”

“What happened in there?” Liz asked.

I said, “May I use your phone, Mrs. Hartman?”

Sutherland shot me a sharp look.

“They aren’t working,” she said.

I swallowed. “Maybe the storm is affecting the signals or—”

“It knocked out the landlines too,” she said. “None of them are working. Not even a dial tone.”

Freezing tendrils of dread slithered down my spine.

But Sutherland seemed not to notice. He touched his forefingers to his lips and nodded. “We’ve been fixated on trying to exorcise the demon, but we’ve failed to ask the most important question.”

Liz frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Why?”
Sutherland said.

I opened my mouth to press him, but he stilled me with a glance. “Why, Jason? Why here? This house? Why Casey specifically?”

His words acted on me like a galvanic shock. My misgivings were swept away in the light of some new realization.

Liz’s voice was fierce. “Will one of you please tell me—”

“One of the most important questions relating to demonic possession,” I said, “is that of selection. Very seldom—in cases deemed to be authentic—is the inhabiting spirit random in its choosing. Ordinarily, there’s some logic behind the selection of a host.”

She seemed to withdraw from me. “Are you saying Casey did something to deserve this?”

Father Sutherland spoke gently. “He’s not saying anything of the sort, Mrs. Hartman. There are myriad reasons why one might become host to a demon.”

She massaged her throat. “Such as?”

“Sometimes the host has dabbled in the occult. Ouija boards, séances, any manner of spiritualism.”

But Liz was shaking her head. “Casey doesn’t get involved with any of that stuff.”

“Perhaps at a friend’s house?” I ventured. “At a sleepover maybe?”

She thought about it. “I can’t imagine any of his friends being interested in the occult. Or their parents allowing it.”

“There are other causes,” Sutherland said. “Sometimes the house itself is responsible for the manifestation. On these occasions the demon takes up residence in a home and preys on someone vulnerable. Typically a child going through adolescence.”

“Do you know the history of the house?” I asked.

She frowned, thinking. “We’re only the third owners. The people we bought it from, they were very nice. Simple people. Ron couldn’t imagine how people so unostentatious could afford such an expensive property.”

“And before that?” I prompted.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Ron probably does, but I’ve never bothered to ask.”

We fell silent, pondering. Then, his voice scarcely audible, Sutherland said, “There is another possibility, Mrs. Hartman.”

She waited with a look of naked dread.

“In some of the worst cases,” Sutherland began, “in some of the most violent cases recorded in the annals of the Catholic Church, the cause of possession was neither a conscious invitation from the host, nor was there a history of supernatural disturbance in the property.” He sighed, plainly unhappy to utter the possibility. “In these cases the possession occurred as a result of some terrible sin.”

Liz looked at him wonderingly. “What could Casey have possibly done?”

“In most instances,” Sutherland explained, “it was not the host who transgressed. It was a member of the family.”

Liz’s eyes widened.

Unable to keep silent any longer, I told Liz what the demon had revealed about her husband while she was unconscious. Sutherland didn’t interrupt me. Perhaps he also desired that she know the truth. To Liz’s credit, she didn’t seem surprised by anything I said.

“Mrs. Hartman,” Sutherland went on, peering deep into her eyes now, “how well can you account for your husband’s whereabouts over the past few months?”

Her voice was little more than a whisper. “You’re talking about the murders.”

Sutherland’s intense scrutiny never wavered.

I waited for Liz to tell Sutherland what she’d told me about her husband’s childhood in Greece. I waited for Sutherland to ask her if he could search the premises. But neither of those things happened.

Because a shrill cry reverberated down the hall and made us stare at each other in shock. It hadn’t come from Casey’s room.

It had come from Carolyn’s.

“Help me with her!” Danny shouted.

Liz bolted toward the bed right away, with Sutherland and me close on her heels. Danny was struggling to hold Carolyn down, but she was whipping from side to side, her head thrashing back and forth on her slender neck hard enough to snap her spine. We grabbed hold of the girl to prevent serious injury. Liz had both hands on the girl’s shrieking face. Danny clutched Carolyn around the waist. I fought to maintain a grip on her scissoring ankles. But, heedless of our attempts, the girl continued to whip from side to side and up and down as if she were being shaken by an immensely powerful man.

“When did this start?” Sutherland shouted.

Danny shook his head, his eyes huge. “Twenty seconds ago?”

Liz pleaded with the girl to stop, as if, I thought wryly, it were in Carolyn’s power to prevent the abuse being visited upon her.

“What was happening when it began?” Sutherland asked.

“Nothing,” Danny said. “We were just talking. I was stroking her forehead. You know, to calm her. And then she just…” He looked away, clenching his jaw with the effort of stabilizing her movements.

Carolyn wailed and begged us to make it stop, and though the abject terror in the girl’s voice deepened my concern, I took it as a hopeful sign that the girl still retained the power to speak in her own voice. The demon, I decided, had not taken control of her the way it had Casey. Which meant…

Sutherland seemed to be on a similar wavelength. “Father Crowder, please go to Casey’s room. Verify for me that—”

But I was already pushing away from the bed and racing toward the bedroom door. For once I was excited, determined even. I had a task which I was capable of performing. Further, I found, I wanted to perform it, wanted to verify that the demon was still inhabiting Casey. If it wasn’t, I wondered, could I possibly smuggle the boy out of his room and away from the house? Was it possible to sneak the demon’s host away while its attention was diverted toward the boy’s younger sister?

I didn’t know if it was possible, and as I dashed down the hallway to Casey’s room, I had a terrible vision of the demon taking up residence inside Carolyn. At least Casey was a teenager, able-bodied enough to perhaps sustain such a dreadful assault. Carolyn was a mere child, with a mind and body patently incapable of withstanding such trauma. I burst into the room, my anger rising. How dare this abomination lay siege to this family? Despite their father’s sins, these children were guiltless. Innocent victims of a fathomless evil. Nor did their mother deserve to be plunged into such a nightmarish ordeal. Wasn’t being married to Ron punishment enough?

Casey’s door was ajar, and I entered without wondering why. Had I paused to consider the fact, who knows what might have happened next. But such questions are pointless now. Since we had vacated the room and closed the door, it had somehow reopened. As if beckoning me inside.

As if inviting me to venture closer.

I got halfway to Casey’s bed and stopped, my airway constricting as though invisible fingers were clutching my neck. I stared at what lay before me.

The extension cords had been torn apart.

The handcuffs had been snapped.

The bed was empty.

I whirled, thinking to escape before the creature could attack me.

Then the door slammed shut.

And the room went black.

Part Three

Clash

Chapter Eight

There was a sense of being caged. And like a trapped thing, I immediately began to panic. Not only was the room as stygian as a tomb, but the atmosphere enveloping me was as humid and thick as an unaired closet. The odors that had assaulted my nostrils earlier now swarmed over me like a shroud. Wild-animal musk. Sweaty, oily hair. Dog excrement. Hot sperm squirted over a prostitute’s heaving stomach.

I grew nauseated, but the nausea was as nothing beside the mind-shattering fear that gripped me. To my left I could hear the storm raging outside, the wind buffeting the solid brick exterior, the rain machine-gunning the double-paned windows. I was, I judged, only seven or eight feet from where I’d entered the room, yet that expanse suddenly seemed impassable. I took a step in the direction of where I believed the door to be.

I paused, my flesh crawling. I fancied I could hear breathing in the room with me, but strove to dismiss the sound as nervousness. There was no denying how overtaxed my faculties at that moment were, how beleaguered my emotions. Even my body, unaccustomed to the physical punishment it had sustained at the hands of the insidious presence, seemed to flag as I took another step toward the door. In seconds I believed I would reach it. I’d actually extended my right hand to grasp the knob when the toe of my shoe encountered some object. My blood froze.

Something touched my ankle, my shin. I realized there were fingers caressing my calves through my robe. Then
under
my robe.

“Jasonnnn,”
a female voice whispered.

Sexual yearning such as I had never experienced swam over me like warm, jasmine-scented water. I could feel the delicate nails tracing the backs of my knees, my hamstrings. Instantly erect, I was assailed by images of Liz, nude, beneath me. Her succulent body was warm and unresisting, her skin supple, her face an exultant pout. As I rammed into her, her bare feet juddered in the air, her molten breath drowsed into my ear.

In the darkness of the bedroom, the fingers curled under my buttocks, then snaked over my thighs. They found the underside of my scrotum, applied pressure, and a wave of arousal so powerful rippled through me that I feared I might faint. In my mind I was still thrusting into Liz’s warm sex. She was offering herself up to me, begging me to give her more, more. She was moaning, and the hands in the darkness found me, began to stroke me. The citrusy scent of her skin was intoxicating. I swayed on my feet. The silky hands kneaded up my body, slithered over my shoulders, and in the dense, sultry air of the bedroom I heard Liz’s voice whispering to me, cajoling me. I realized I’d closed my eyes at some point, and now I opened them, and when I did I let loose with the wildest shriek of horror I have uttered in my life. It was the
thing
that had aroused me, the demon that had possessed Casey, but now the boy’s face was a goblin-like nightmare, the heavy eyebrows arched above eyes that were a lambent, hellish red, the pupils narrow and vertical, the pupils of a cat.

Lightning strobed in the tenebrous bedroom and I saw the demon’s maw was stretched wide, the hot slaver dripping off its bared incisors. It was about to sink its killing teeth into my throat, and by instinct I jerked up my right hand to ward it off. It lunged at me. Fire erupted in my hand. When I brought it to my face for inspection, another triple flash of lightning revealed the jetting stumps of my pinkie and ring finger, both torn off by the demon’s razor-like bite.

Backpedaling, I clutched my hemorrhaging hand and wished futilely that Father Sutherland were still beside me. I heard it chewing, watched the unblinking red eyes drifting nearer in the gloom. The backs of my legs connected with something, and I realized too late it was the footboard of the bed. I toppled onto it, kicking at the demon despite the fact that I had lost sight of its infernal scarlet eyes. I did hear it laughing at me though, and the effluvium that filled the bedroom was so powerful that the urge to vomit nearly surpassed my terror. Dread of the demon reduced my movements to feeble twitchings and ineffectual kicks. I was drowning in the odors of shit and fur and sex and death and my own spraying blood.

With a fresh surge of panic, I realized I was lying on the exact spot Casey had occupied earlier, and with the realization came the sensations of moist sheets, cold and clinging to my flesh like sluggish parasites. There came the briefest hint of quicksilver through the windows, and in the attendant rumble of thunder I caught a shadowy glimpse of the figure striding around the bed for me.

Rolling sideways, I hit the floor, and in my childlike fright, I scuttled under the bed to put something between me and the presence.

The darkness under the bed was greater than any I had ever experienced. Though the space from floor to bedframe was at least a foot, it was as though the bed itself possessed some light-eating quality that ensured absolute blackness. I felt blind, and though I continued to hear rumbles of thunder, no shimmer of light reached me where I lay.

I listened for the laughter of the demon, for the creaking of a floorboard. So great was my terror that I actually expected the thing to compress the whole bed on top of me, thus smothering me while I let loose with one final soundless shriek.

But other than the sounds of the storm, there was nothing. I wondered vaguely where the others had gone. Were they still with Carolyn? Was she still being attacked? I didn’t know, but I confess here that any concerns I had for the child were as secondary as they were ephemeral. In my childish dread, I even flirted with the notion that the demon had forgotten me.

Until I heard my mother’s voice.

Had my mom not died when I was twelve years old, the sound of her voice would not have been so disconcerting. But she had. Just a senseless traffic accident. Coming home from work. Black ice. A loss of control, her little car veering into the oncoming lane and hitting a semi head on.

I never knew my father. Nor did I know the men my mother used to bring home. After she died, I went to live with my uncle, but though he was a decent person, the damage had already been done. I associated men with meanness, with drunkenness.

It was with a man named Joe Wilson that I discovered my mom one night many years before her accident. I’ve since blocked out most of the memory, but as near as I can tell, I was five years old. Just five and completely naïve about men and women. So when I awoke that night and heard my mother’s and Joe’s voices calling out together, I automatically hurried to her room to make sure they were okay.

When I stepped through the doorway, they were locked together, my mother sitting on top of Joe, a man whose hairy body reminded me of a werewolf movie I’d glimpsed on cable TV when my mom didn’t know I was watching.

She didn’t know I was watching now either, but I was. And, what was more, I was so transfixed by the appalling sight of her straddling Joe that I grew dizzy. I swayed on my bare feet as Joe reached up and fondled my mother’s breasts. I became nauseated as my mother moaned out words I knew were bad words because I’d heard Joe holler them sometimes when he watched football.

I felt no excitement at the sight of those writhing bodies, no inchoate sexual thrill. There was only a dismal sense of betrayal. And the nausea. At some point I threw up, the creamy acid bubbling out of my mouth and painting the front of my pajamas. It must have been the splattering sound that drew their attention because they looked at me then, my mother with surprise, Joe with unconcealed disgust.

“Go back to bed, honey,” my mom said.

I started to cry.

“Jesus Christ,” Joe muttered. “Get him the fuck out of here.”

I thought my mom would defend me, but she just scowled. “Go to
bed
, Jason.”

I cried harder, wanting my mom to hold me.

“Get him
out
of here, Linda!” Joe demanded.

She scrambled off of Joe, whose glistening member made a slurping sound as it left her body. The sight of it made me want to puke again, but then the sight of my mom’s milky flesh filled my vision. She was yelling at me, her fingers biting into my shoulder. She drove me from the room and into the bathroom across the hallway.

I plopped down on the closed toilet seat and waited for her to clean me up, but she flipped on the light and continued berating me, shouting that she’d be able to find a man if she didn’t have to worry about me all the time, telling me what a good guy Joe was, what a great provider he would be. But I scarcely heard what she was saying because I’d noticed her black nest of pubic hair—it was difficult not to notice as I was sitting on the toilet and her midsection was at eye level.

As I watched, I saw something pearlescent begin to seep from between her legs. At first it reminded me of the cold medicine she sometimes fed me from an eyedropper. But as I watched, the drooping stream of mucus-like liquid grew longer, attenuating, then plummeted to the pale-green, tiled floor with a quiet splat. I threw up again, spraying orange liquid all over my mother’s legs and the white shower curtain beyond.

Then she was shrieking at me, railing at me for ruining her night. I heard Joe cussing in the hallway, his heavy footfalls retreating toward the door. My mom left me sitting there. She implored Joe to stay. But he didn’t, and when my mom returned, she bellowed at me as she never had before, sobbing and screaming and occasionally slapping my cheeks. She left the bathroom after that, and I heard her weeping in her bedroom. I thought of going to her to apologize, but I was too afraid of getting smacked again.

Eventually, I went back to my bedroom and lay on top of the covers. The vomit stank, but it had dried to a moist crust on my chin and the front of my pajamas. At some point, despite the bitter taste in my mouth, I must have fallen asleep.

Lightning strobed in Casey’s bedroom, and I sucked in air, realizing I’d been lost in the suppressed memory. I turned to the left, half expecting to discover the demon or my mother or even Joe Wilson lying beside me under the bed. But there was no one there with me, just empty space. I began to wonder if the demon had left the room, perhaps to prey on someone stronger, and I resolved to escape a space that had begun to feel like a dusty coffin. Moving slowly, careful to make no sound, I wormed my way sideways toward the down-hanging corner of a sheet. At every moment I expected a face to appear in the gap between the floor and the bed, an inverted face with glowing red eyes and a malicious smile.

But no face appeared. Nor did I hear anything other than the storm. Had the demon really moved on from me? I knew the thought should have filled me with concern for the others, but I promised at the outset to record the events of that night as faithfully as I could, and so I will.

It is therefore with deepest shame that I admit to experiencing a gust of relief at emerging from my hiding place and finding the room barren. The door was closed, but that meant little. The demon could have easily gone out noiselessly and shut the door behind it. Or perhaps it had opened a window and leapt into the night in pursuit of new victims. Such a feat of physical prowess would not have surprised me. For now I was convinced that the demon was none other than the Sweet Sixteen Killer. Its knowledge of the crimes, coupled with the strength and ferocity it displayed, made it easy for me to imagine it doing those terrible things to the six dead girls.

At thought of the victims, I remembered my severed fingers and realized that I’d neglected to keep the blood flow staunched. I endeavored to stand up, but the loss of blood defeated me. Swooning, I flopped sideways onto the bed, and doing all I could to tend to my bleeding hand, I lay on my back and closed my eyes.

I decided that if I survived the night, I’d see a therapist about the memory this experience had just dredged up. I knew psychology wasn’t a linear subject and understood the folly in attributing all my difficulties with the opposite sex to a single traumatic event involving my mother and Joe Wilson. But I thought the experience at the very least germane to my troubles and wondered if I might not enter my thirties with a healthier view of women and maybe even explore the possibility of entering a relationship with one. The night had certainly revealed my lack of fortitude, so it would be no great loss to the church if I left the priesthood. Perhaps it would be a relief to Father Sutherland. At least he wouldn’t have to fire me.

Thinking of Sutherland, I opened my eyes and beheld the figure glued to the ceiling above me, the red eyes glaring at me in triumph.

The demon fell. As it swooped downward, its splayed limbs groped for me as if eager for my blood. Forgetting my injury, I brought up my hands to fend it off, but its snarling body slammed against me, setting off a conflagration in my mangled hand and pounding the wind from my lungs. Its head rose, the mottled fangs catching glints of pale light, and I jerked up a forearm a moment before it could chomp into my face. The scimitar teeth punctured the flesh of my forearm, pierced the surface of my ulna. The pain was excruciating, but I was barely conscious of it. The demon crunched down harder, its black tongue flicking at the blood that gushed from the wound.

I shot a knee into its crotch, but if anything this only whipped its bloodlust into a more violent frenzy. Its talons harrowed my shoulders, shredding my robe, my T-shirt, and carved deep slashes in my deltoid muscles. I bellowed in terror and agony, implored someone to intervene, and as though one of my prayers had at last been answered, I heard footsteps in the hallway. There were shouting voices, the sounds of a struggle. What sounded like a man screaming.

The beast gave off the attack to stare over its shoulder at the door. My angle afforded me a glimpse of the doorway just as it burst open. I muttered a mental prayer of thanksgiving, thinking Father Sutherland or perhaps Danny Hartman had arrived to save me.

But it was neither Sutherland nor Danny who came through that door.

It was Jack Bittner.

The question of how he’d gotten out of the cruiser did not occur to me at that moment, though I would learn how later. The only thoughts I had at that moment were the desperate hope that the demon would release me and a sudden fear of being shot.