The Accidental Exorcist (4 page)

A few pedestrians passing by on the
way to the beach with surfboards under their arms or beach bags
slung over their shoulders turned their heads briefly, but just
continued on their way.

Abby put the car keys in her bag and
stepped out. Things were strangely quiet. It was the middle of the
day and perhaps most of the strangely absent and invisible
neighbors were probably still at work.

But where were the police
officers?

A cold breeze gusted through the
Phoenix Robellini that stood on either side of the Morgans’ shut
door causing them to make a serpentine hiss. Abby shuddered. Where
was everyone?

She knocked on the door. To her
surprise, it creaked open. Abby stuck her head inside just enough
to see that it was disturbingly dark inside. The curtains must all
have been drawn and the lights shut. “Hello?”

No reply.

Not a sound but the hissing wind
behind her ears.

Something told her viscerally: Get the
hell out, and run! She almost did so. But her rational mind mocked
her. You’ve been watching too many scary movies and reading too
much Stephen King. There’s a logical explanation for everything.
You just don’t know it yet.

“
Right.” Not feeling much
better, only shamed by her intellect, Abby pushed the door open.
“Hello? Father McGhee?”

She took a step into the
gloom.

Another cold gust blew at
her. Perhaps the back door was open and it was nothing more than a
cross current. Then the door behind her creaked again. Of course.
Next, the wind would blow it shut.
How
cliché
.

Abby tried to find a light switch
before it happened. But before she could, the door slammed shut
with a bang. In spite of the voice of reason forbidding her to be
frightened, she let out a gasp. Her heart raced, as she found
herself unable to adjust from the bright sunlight outside to the
utter darkness within.

“
Hello? It’s Doctor
Abigail Lee. Is anyone home?”

Groping in the dark, she found a wall.
It felt odd. Not smooth, but not like the orange peel texture so
commonly found on the drywall interiors of San Diego houses. It
felt almost like—

Oh my God!

–
like reptilian
scales.

Then, thinking she’d found the light
switch, she touched something cold, viscous, and wet.

Abby pulled her hand away with an
embarrassing yelp.

Instinctively, she backed away and
felt something small and hard press into her bare arm. A light
switch.

Thank God.

For a moment, she hesitated to turn on
the lights. The irrational fear of what she might find warred
against the very real fear of not knowing what lurked in the
blackness.

Just before she pushed the switch up,
Abby froze. In the distance, and from the sound of it behind a
closed door, she heard someone crying. A woman.

“
Cheryl?”

Abby took a deep breath.

Flipped the switch.

And found nothing but a living room,
no slime or reptilian scales on the walls. Perfectly normal
looking, except for the heavy religious emphasis in its artwork.
Adorning the walls were paintings of Jesus’ crucifixion, brown
wooden crucifixes, and other decorations which shouted their faith.
But all the heavy red curtains had been drawn shut.

Abby turned to the hallway and
shouted, “Where is everyone?”

Listening carefully, she followed the
sound of crying until she arrived at a bedroom door, down the hall
past the kitchen towards the backyard. She knocked.

“
Hello? It’s Doctor Lee!”
She turned the doorknob.

Behind the door, something stirred.
The sound of agonized straining made Abby release the doorknob’s
tension and let it turn back.

But the door flew open, ripping the
knob out of her hand.

What Abby saw forced a scream into her
throat.

But the sheer horror kept it lodged.
Nothing came out.

Sprawled on the floor, two uniformed
policemen lay in pools of blood around their heads. One of them
holding his gun. An EMT’s head hung face down over the red jagged
edge off a broken window, the sharp points of which protruded from
the back of his neck. The other EMT lay sidelong on the floor, half
of his head gone, apparently blown away by the gun in his mouth.
Over in the corner sat a small dog kennel crate. Trapped behind the
metal gate, a small brown Chihuahua whimpered and
shivered.

Abby stumbled back trying to run, but
her back hit the hallway wall. Shaking her head side to side, she
crumpled to the ground as the door, on its own impulse, swung
completely open.

This revealed a wide-eyed Cheryl,
squatting atop a green wingback chair like a frightened animal. Her
complexion was bluish-grey, her eyes dark-rimmed like those of a
raccoon. Perspiration glistened from her forehead, but she looked
like a person fished out of a freezing pond.

Cheryl’s eyes seemed to make contact
with Abby’s, but it felt more like she was looking through her
rather than at her. “No...No, no, no!”

“
Ch-Cheryl?”

At the sound of her name, Cheryl
looked all around, as if she hadn’t noticed Abby sitting in the
hall outside the door. Her eyes grew so wide there seemed to be no
eyelids.

“
Doctor Lee,
please…”

For that brief moment, Cheryl whined
like a frightened child. This caused Abby to get up, despite her
fear. She stepped into the room and turned to her. “My God, what’s
happened here?”

“
I’m begging you! Help
me!” At the foot of the chair upon which Cheryl crouched, a black
shoe stuck out. The foot within it twitched. That’s when Abby
noticed the hem of a black robe.

“
Father McGhee?” Abby took
a step toward the chair. But she stopped cold when Cheryl let out a
blood congealing scream.

“
They’ve come back for me!
Sweet Jesus, they’ve come back!”

Abby rushed over to the
priest. Her rational mind screamed in protest,
Remember that wild beast in Salton Sea Women’s
Penitentiary
?
The
one who almost tore you to pieces?

Not taking her eyes off Cheryl—who
still seemed herself, just terrified and pointing at Father McGhee
with one hand and with the other covering her mouth—Abby knelt and
pulled the priest up to a seated position.

Alive, thank God, but trembling. His
eyes darted back and forth between Abby and Cheryl in the chair
above him. He was a frail man, who couldn’t have been much heavier
than Abby herself. White hair covered his head completely. His pale
eyebrows arched with trepidation.

“
You must leave!” He
whispered, and tried to stand.

“
Leave?”

A low-pitched growl filled the room.
Abby didn’t want to look up, because something inside
her—definitely not her rational mind—told her she wouldn’t find
Cheryl there anymore.

“
Get up, Father.
Hurry.”

“
I can’t.”

“
Why not?”

He tried to lift his finger to point,
but it shot back down. As if someone grabbed it and yanked it down.
“They won’t let me.”

At first, she thought the priest was
delirious and was referring to the dead policeman and EMT. But when
she looked up, there was Cheryl—or what once had been—glaring down
monstrously, thick saliva rolling from her teeth and lower jaw. Her
face was a web of veins, her eyes bulging to the point of popping
out.

When she spoke, it sounded
like a hundred vulgar men, their words guttural and wet with
mucous. “
Get out of here, you
whore
!”

Nothing would have made Abby happier
than to comply. But when she tried to take Father McGhee’s hand,
the creature that had been Cheryl roared and struck her across the
face.

Abby fell back on her rear and watched
in horror as Cheryl stood up slowly off her haunches, snarled at
the priest and pointed her open hand at him. To her Abby’s utter
astonishment, Father McGhee, now straining to breathe and clutching
his throat, floated into the air. The little dog in the kennel
crate barked nervously.

Cheryl flung her hand toward the wall
and the Priest went flying into it. His back hit the wall. His feet
dangled three feet off the ground but he did not fall or slide
down. Instead, he hung there like black beetle pinned to a wood
block—only, his limbs were still moving and his mouth opened and
shut, opened and shut, like a dying fish on the hot surface of a
dock.

From within his robe he pulled out a
crucifix and tried to wave it at Cheryl.

She only laughed.

The crucifix fell to the ground, right
on top of a set of rosary beads and a Bible.

“
THEY ONLY WORK IF YOU
HAVE FAITH…
FATHER!
”

Gasping, Father McGhee tried to answer
through his choked breath. “I…am…not afraid…of you!”

The Cheryl creature turned to Abby,
causing her to back away. Abby’s hands found the Bible. She grabbed
it, foolishly thinking she could use it like a shield. With a
sickly jaundiced eye, Cheryl glared at Abby, then turned back to
the priest. Once again, in manifold voices, Cheryl said to Father
McGhee, “I KNOW ALL YOUR SINS.” Then she turned to Abby and smiled
with teeth stained with blood from her gums. “AND YOUR’S TOO,
ABIGAIL LEE.”

“
Doctor Lee…” the priest
muttered. “I don’t think…I…have enough—”

“
SHUT UP, TIRESOME OLD
FOOL!” Cheryl lifted both of her hands towards him. His body came
forward from the wall, then floated towards the curtains facing the
backyard. “YOU NO LONGER AMUSE ME!”

A thunderous sound shook the room. The
walls began to creak and splinter. The entire house began to shake.
Cheryl threw one hand forward causing Father McGhee to crash
through the glass, tearing the curtains out with him.

That’s when Abby saw a pair of legs
dangling outside the window.

Ted Morgan, Cheryl’s
husband.

“
Oh my God!”

“
DON’T BOTHER CALLING FOR
GOD, SWEETIE. HE’S DEAD!” Cheryl—or the creature that controlled
her—regarded Abby and licked her dripping lips like a wild hyena
about feast on the entrails of a leftover gazelle.

Dust and drywall crumbled from the
ceiling onto the uniformed bodies of the creature’s victims.
Clutching Father McGhee’s Bible to her chest, Abby looked
up.

It shouldn’t have shocked her but it
did. Cheryl’s pale, cadaverous feet were floating in the air, her
entire body lit up with a sickly green hue. Her hair spread out
like Medusa, her skirt flapped in the stench of the wind, which
howled and whirled around the quaking room.

“
WHY DO YOU REMAIN,
ABBY?”

Abby shook the priest’s Bible at it.
“For Cheryl. Leave her alone!”

The creature let out a horrible
belching sound, accompanied by a stench like rotting flesh. It was
laughing. A chorus of hundreds of ghouls, laughing. “DO YOU EVEN
KNOW WHO I AM, YOU PITIFUL LITTLE GIRL?”

As, the house shook, pieces of plaster
got into Abby’s eyes, nose and mouth. Then something surged though
her entire being. It wasn’t adrenaline—she could tell. It was a
powerful sense of calm, like the familiarity of a childhood song.
She found herself at the point of decision: fight or
flight.

“
I’M FEELING BENEVOLENT,
ABBY. RUN AWAY NOW, AND I’LL LET YOU LIVE.”

It wasn’t her scientific mind telling
her to stay. No, that part of her had told her to run before she
even entered the house. Whatever it was, it felt like
something—someone she’d known all her life. “I’m not leaving
without Cheryl!” She stood up.

The creature’s eyes glowed bloody red.
Cheryl’s veined face became skeletal, pulling her skin so taut it
began to crack, and blood oozed from the fissures. Instantly, Abby
felt an enormous weight push her down to the ground. She fell and
the Bible bounced away.

“
I TOLD YOU TO
LEAVE!”

“
And I told you: Not
without Cheryl!” Tears of fright and determination welled up in her
eyes.

“
FOOL! FOR THOUSANDS OF
YEARS I HAVE TRAVELLED THE EARTH SEEKING TO DEVOUR WHOMEVER I
PLEASE! TODAY, BEFORE YOU DRAW YOUR LAST BREATH, YOU SHALL KNOW THE
NAME OF HIM WHO RULES OVER ALL THE EARTH.”

The wind felt like a tornado now. All
kinds of objects flew around the room. The green chair floated, the
entire four-post bed also rose off the ground. But that calm strong
voice within prompted Abby to shout, “Who are you!”

The demon laughed arrogantly.
“LEGION.”

At the very mention of its name, Abby
felt the blood drain from her face. She recognized IT from one of
the gospels, but couldn’t quite remember to what end.

It let out another horrific
roar.

This time, the cage of the Chihuahua’s
kennel began rattling. The little dog within had changed. Flashing
its fangs, its ears lying flat, it growled and smashed itself
repeatedly against the metal gate until, bloodied by repeated
blows, it dislodged from its plastic frame.