My Demonic Ghost: Banished Spirits

Copyright for Jacinta Maree 2014

Cover Design by Catherine Nodet

www.catherine-nodet.fr

Edited by Karen Reckard and

Heather Savage

Staccato Publishing

Maple Grove, MN

AUS Edition: April 2015

ISBN-13: 978-1511637473

ISBN-10: 1511637471

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Printed in Australia

They are the shadows moving in darkness…

Demonic humans with ash painted masks…             

Do not help these banished spirits….

                            Do not fall for their tricks…

You must destroy them before they destroy you.

BANISHED SPIRITS

By Jacinta Maree

   Book one

Chapter One:

I used to not fear death but now it follows behind me at every turn. I was nervous, visibly nervous; my fingers hadn’t let my luggage handle go since the beginning of the trip. It must’ve been nearly two years ago when I last rode the Whitehaven train alone. It was a two hour trip with the clattering and whinging of train wheels rolling over their tracks. But now I hardly noticed, I hardly noticed anything anymore. My eyes were glued to the endless passing of water down below, its navy glow reflecting off the orange and faded pink tinge spread across the sky. The sun; it was setting, tucking itself back into its slumber behind the lips of the far off mountains. I lingered on the edge of sleep throughout most of the trip.

My hard case luggage rocked against me as the slither of the train ducked its head into a nest of hills and houses. The stretch of endless blue sea vanished without a moment’s notice as I entered the mouth of the tunnels. The silence of the voices, the lack of company, and the vacant touches of strangers as they weaved past; these subtle things I would have never thought I’d miss. Now it was just me, this one train, and my bag. My mother had been sitting with me the last time I was here; I had been about three years younger, with an ice-cream in my hands that leaked down my fingers.  I had smiled, laughed, looked up at my mother’s kind blue eyes and felt at home instantly. The weather had been a lot warmer back then.  I now cringe at the notion of anything icy moving along my hand. But this time my mother was nothing more than a voice on the other end of a phone call.

She had called just moments before; worried of course, the sadness in her voice was poorly masked by laughter.  I could only comfort her back with the same fakeness. It was a short call, cut off by the distance separating us. The train finally came to a halt with the screech of metal wheels, rocking back and forth. I picked up my bag and walked out.

The smoke of the train floated into the air in thin black mushroom tails and disappeared behind the trees. As I got off the train the station was nothing more than a block of concrete in the middle of bush with only two wooden posts and one large sign. One would think there was no such thing as Whitehaven and the train had merely deserted me in the middle of a bush land.

Whitehaven was a little town tucked away in the mountains. I suppose there are some advantages to being in the bush compared to the city, but his place, these swarms of nature and wild life, this wasn’t home. Not to me anyway, a girl who is use to trees being confined behind fences.

The wisps of my light blonde hair played beside me, tickling under my chin. Three months ago Mum and I drove out here to visit Dad, but Mum hadn’t been back since.

I paused and clutched at my chest as a surge of twists yanked at my heart. The memory hurt so I instantly dropped it.

Leaving the dirt path, stepping foot onto the cracked concrete of the road and following down the line of houses, I was inching closer to the house. But the closer I got, the heavier my footsteps felt and the tighter the knot in my stomach seemed to pull. The streets were silent, occupied more by nature than people as the stretch of concrete road crumbled back into dirt lanes. It was getting darker and darker by the minute, the light fading much faster compared to the sunsets back home. The city lights kept the people awake but here nothing glowed except the moon.

Entering the pit of the woods I stumbled upon an old, decaying house. It was grand in structure, made of stone and had more leaves than tile sitting on top of the roof. Across the face of the house were patches of white panel windows and a single green door. A stone path that lead toward the entrance was buried underneath the grass; the roof appeared hairy, filtered with a green paste of leaves as vines climbed up the walls and dangled lifelessly off the window sills. The building was double storied with gnarled trees leaning and peeking into the bedroom windows. The front yard was large and connected by a long patch of untamed grass; a clearing path for cars where the in dints of car wheels vanished underneath the lush of re-growth.

The knot that had once entangled in my stomach had morphed into steel cords pegging my feet into the ground. The weight intensified from being a small downward tug to now heaving a huge crate behind me.

I reached the door without any manner of grace within me, having twice tripped on boulders hidden among the garden bed and once slipped through a ditch where rabbits had burrowed themselves a home. With my hand held up high, fingers curled into a fist I quietly knocked twice on the front door. There wasn’t any movement inside, no shadow gliding between the gaps of the door, nor were any of the lights on.

My knocks were meant to be casual but had somehow quickened into urgent taps, and I hadn’t noticed until now that my hand was trembling as I held it out. I planted down my bags and weaved my way through the front garden, leaned up against the window and peered in. Just as I expected, inside was completely dark and lifeless.  But he has to be here, he wouldn’t be anywhere else.

I couldn’t keep my voice steady, “H-Hello?” Another tap, this time on the glass of the window as the hollow sound echoed inside the household. There was a stir of life, small but quiet. I scampered back to the front door just in time to catch the doorknob twist. The hinges creaked as the door was slowly pulled inside. He kept to the shadows with just an eye hooked around the door.

“Dad… it’s me…. Rachael.” The man flinched, ready to slam the door shut but stopped himself.

“Rachael? My dear girl, I’ve missed you so much.” He stepped out and hugged me.

I could’ve burst into tears right there and then. He looked like nothing more than the waste left from his former life. He was old beyond his years; frail and balding so patches of his blonde hair could barely be seen across his grey scalp.  His eyes were drooping; his skin, paste and bones, could be seen poking through the thin fabrics of his robe. Even as he hugged me, I could feel the quiver in his breathing and the knobs of his spinal cord down the back of his leathery skin. He was dying, but not from body failure. It was something else, a mental thing, and it was the reason why everything had turned out the way it did. My world had changed again and again, like a boat being thrown onto its side by each large, passing wave, never letting me have time to assemble myself and resettle before the next hit bowled me over.

No amount of medical treatment could find out what was wrong with him, out of all the psychiatrists in all of the hospitals that admitted him. He just started dying …without warning.  No cancer cells or signs of rare diseases, it was as though his body sped up to meet that of an 88 year old. The doctors wanted to write a book on him, but he wouldn’t allow it and neither would I, this is not how we wanted to remember him.

I left my bag sitting at the front foyer and followed dad into the kitchen. He used a cane to help himself stay upright and had a terrible limp. The walls, the carpet, the windows and even the stairs were covered in pulverized mud; his feet completely bare and blackened as he dragged himself around. There was a lingering stench buried inside the furniture; it was as if dad and this decaying reek had combined into their own unique perfume.

“You must be thirsty, please sit down. I’ll get you a drink.”

He was gone behind the kitchen wall where I could hear the clattering of cups and saucers.  He returned with a glass of water and then sat down so we were facing each other at the dining room table.  The blanket of dust covering the table was thick; I started to wonder what dad actually did with all his time. All of his belongings hadn’t been touched in a while, dust being collected across nearly every surface and there were muddy footprints covering the floor, perhaps he would spend his days outside in the garden and wobble in for bed with the dirt still stuck to his feet? A part of me even suspected that the bed would be also covered in dust and neglect. 

“How’s school?” Dad asked.

“Oh, it is okay I guess. English is easy, even though I’ve gotten Mrs. Watson again but I guess that's alright too.”

“Mrs. Watson?” 

“Uh … yeah, she was my year eight English teacher.”

“I don’t understand, aren’t you in year seven this year?”

I couldn’t help myself feeling just slightly offended, but quickly wiped my face clear before he noticed. “No dad… I’m fifteen now.” There was an awkward pause, my dad’s eyes dropping to the ground as I fidgeted in my seat.

“My own daughter is nearly sixteen?”Upset, he rolled his forehead into his palm and exhaled deeply. The tension made everything feel like walking on egg shells. “And your mother?” He spoke with his head propped up by his arm, his voice slightly muffled by his wrist.

“She’s fine too…”

Another gap filled with awkward silence. Daringly, I glanced upwards and pursed my lips, thinking cautiously if I should bring up the topic of the demons. If I were to mention the spirits, would he open up to me? Or would he scream and try to hurt me? Hurt himself again?

I bit my lip and lowered my head, too, the cup of water now shaking in my hand. I couldn’t do it, not yet anyway.

It was a disturbing thought, a hazy nightmare that lingers and pokes at me in reminder that it was still there like an alarm clock going off every half an hour.
Tick! Tick! Tick! Tick!

It had begun a year and a half ago, the obsession of spirits and the need to follow the orders of this so called “evil” to free himself. It burned my eyes to remember. I glanced up and blinked slowly, dad watching my face with anxious patience. He hadn’t been to any special or suspicious places that could’ve been the reason for this change in behaviour, nor did he take drugs or interact with anybody that could have influenced him.  He just changed, referred to his soul as nourishment for the Banished, and how this connection was dragging him into his early grave. First he had just disappeared for a long time then started immersing himself intensely in demonic exorcists and acting out in aggressive and violent ways. He lost all interest in everything that he used to hold dear; got fired from work, continuously left Mum and I worried about his safety for weeks on end, set fire to things, broke into people’s houses or attacked strangers on the street, and constantly tried to end his own life. He was sent from mental institution to mental institution, all of them unable to offer any source of a cure.

He lost everything: the house, his family, his marriage, his mind, and now he’s losing his life.

“Is your mother, s-s-seeing anyone… else?” His head twitched, jerking quickly towards the cluster of shadows in the hallway behind my shoulder, and when I turned my head to catch what he was staring at, he dropped his head back into his open palm again.  I turned back very carefully, pacing my words in even and steady breaths.

“Uh, no she's not…. Do you still love her?” Perhaps this was my inner child talking, wanting my family to be back to the way things were. Always chasing my happily ever after.

“Yes,” he said quickly while lifting his head up so our eyes met. “Does she still love me?”

A burn of guilt caused my lower lip to tremble. I could not answer. I lowered my head, and softly, I heard him exhale and lower his, too.  After a few hours, I had set up dad a nice hot tea and served him his prescribed medication.

By the time I said my goodnights and tiptoed up stairs, it had just reached 8:30. The room was just as plain and old as the rest of the house, neglected and broken, like an old abandoned tree house that no one liked to venture into. I heaved my bag up with me, dumped it by the foot of the bed and rummaged through until I came across a book. The bindings were weak and losing grip on the pages. The bed wasn’t dirty, but moaned underneath me as I climbed on top.