The Possessed

by Kirk Kilgrave

  A second later, the door slammed shut.

  I remained silent and still. I didn’t need to look to know that Jake had fled. During the direst moment in my life, he severed all ties, didn’t even say goodbye, and ran out on me.

  My nerves clenched, spiking my shoulders upwards. I couldn’t get a word out, couldn’t even figure out how to frame the next question. Tears entered my eyes.

  “You don’t need him, honey,” said my mother’s voice. “I knew he was unworthy of you. That’s why I pressed him for the truth. You see that, don’t you? I didn’t mean to hurt you. But I had to show you the truth.”

  I slapped the pages of the Bible, stifling a whimper of pain that lashed against my heart.

  No, don’t grieve the loss of that sham of a relationship. He never loved you. If he did, he wouldn’t have left.

  My vision blurred from the moisture in my eyes.

  A teardrop fell onto a page in the Bible. I flipped that page. I didn’t want to see any evidence of frailty. Now with tears beaded in my eyes, I couldn’t find the right page.

  I can’t do this. Not now. Not ever.

  “He was filthy,” said the demon. “He may have had a disease. Maybe even more than one!”

  Eloise placed one hand to the middle of my back. “I’m sorry, Jocelyn.” Her voice was sympathetic and comforting. “I’m so sorry. But you can’t do this right now. You just can’t. Your mother’s life depends upon it. Think of her. Think of the battle going on inside of her right now. And think of the demon in front of us. Concentrate on that. Concentrate only on the evil standing before us. Only that.”

  “But he just left,” I said, whimpering, my voice barely audible. I hated the sound of it: weak and deplorable.

  Don’t let him do this to you. You’re better off without him. He proved it by getting away from you at the first sign of trouble. Is that what you want in a man?

  “Come to your mother. I can help you.”

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Of course, I can. I nursed you as a child. I kissed away your cuts and bruises. Remember?”

  “No,” I said a tad louder, anger now sizzling through me like the wick that led to a stack of dynamite.

  “I’ll always be here for you. You know that.”

  “No!” I shouted as the wick hit the explosive. “Quiet!” I blinked rapidly to offset the tears in my eyes. I wouldn’t let another tear fall.

  “Jocelyn, what are you doing?” asked my mother’s voice, free of aggression and judgment.

  It was a trick, of course. I ignored its voice. I’d entered the first phase of the ritual: The Pretense. In this stage, the demon did everything possible to hide behind the possessed, using it to pretend it didn’t exist.

  Having passed the demon’s first test, I felt confidence blooming in my chest. Not a lot. Just a little. At this point, I’d take a smidge. It didn’t matter. I had to build on it, rack up one small win after another.

  “Have I pushed you too hard?” it asked. “I only did it because you needed to be tough after your father died.”

  It spoke in Lilah’s voice, but it didn’t contain the condescension that always followed her words. It sounded phony. Like an actor trying to impersonate a real person in a docudrama on the silver screen. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get every cadence right. Neither could this demon.

  I started into The Litany of the Saints, whereby I asked God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit to have mercy on humankind. Above the top of the book, I looked at the demon.

  “Will you forgive me? Please?”

  Why hadn’t the words I’d read had any impact on the demon? Nonplussed, I continued the prayer by naming the Saints and asked them and the Lord to spare us for our sins. Upon completion, I once more flicked my gaze at the demon.

  Baffled, it said, “I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness. But I need it.”

  “What is your name, demon?”

  “Demon?” it repeated, blinking and wincing, acting confused.

  “Your name. What is it?”

  “You know my name. I’m Lilah; your mother.”

  Ignoring it, I launched into The Lord’s Prayer, keeping my voice strong, determined that this prayer would work, as Nona had success using it with Pheurianis.

  Moments later, after I finished, the demon said, “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I only wanted the best for you. I thought I needed to push you. Now, I see that I was wrong.” It didn’t cower upon hearing those words as Pheurianis had done.

  “Quiet, demon!” I tried to remain emotionless. “What is your name?”

  “I already told you. I’m your mother. How could you forget?”

  “You are not Lilah. You are not my mother. You are a demon. Now, what is your name?”

  “Why are you ignoring me? I apologized. Why can’t you forgive me?”

  Seething inside, but unwilling to let it see my rage, I flipped pages, looking for the next section of the Bible.

  “Remember,” Eloise prodded. “No conversations. Stay the course. Stay focused.”

  At that moment, I found the right page, but I had trouble seeing the words on the page. It had nothing to do with fear or pressure. My vision went askew because I hadn’t slept in so long, and for that reason, I couldn’t focus properly. Doubt crept into my mind and made my fingers tremble, forcing the book to wobble in my palms.

  “What’s the matter, honey?”

  I wanted to tell it to shut its mouth, but I remained mindful of Eloise’s reminder and Nona’s teachings: don’t engage the entity in a discussion. Doing so may result in a loss of concentration and a downward spiral from which you may not be able to recover.

  “Please, darling, look at me.”

  Darling? To use that term of endearment showed how poorly the demon misunderstood my mother’s psyche. It either didn’t know how my mother spoke to me or it relied on affection in hopes that I’d respond because I’d always hoped my mother would love me. Probably the latter. I blocked out the demon’s words and stared at the page, willing myself to see the words. Within seconds, I’d mastered the job.

  Next, I started Psalm 53: “God by your name save me and by your might defend my cause.”

  Eloise sidled up next to me and read from the book, “God, hear my prayer. Hearken to the words of my mouth.”

  I continued through the prayer, pausing every sentence or two to let Eloise chime in, as we traded off reading from the Bible. Having completed the Psalm, I looked over the top of the book once again.

  “Why do you keep ignoring me?”

  I turned to Eloise and nodded at her.

  My partner squirted holy water on the demon’s face. It jerked backward, staggering in place for a moment, throwing its fingers into its eyes, trying to rid the liquid from its skin. But steam didn’t rise from its flesh.

  My breath left me. Yes! Keep going. Slowly. Confidently. “Jesus Christ speaks through me. He wants your name. What is it?”

  “You’re ashamed of me because I’ve spiraled into alcoholism.” Its voice lowered, and it let out a huff of air, exasperated. “Haven’t you made mistakes? Why can’t you forgive me?

  No longer at the beginning, we were now moving into The Pretense, a dangerous forest where the demon would use a variety of tricks, lies, and ugly truths to confuse, challenge, or humiliate an exorcist. Maintain your composure. Be careful of traps.

  “I’ll do better,” the demon said. “I promise. Please give me another chance.”

  Eloise cleared her throat. “Go to the back of the book. Read the second to last page.”

  I did as instructed. “I command you, unclean spirit, by the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit, by the coming of our Lord for judgment, that you tell me your name. I command you to obey me, for I am a servant of God.”

  The demon’s face scrunched up, lips curling like waves in a dark ocean, nose arching down like the slope of a crag
gy mountain. “After all, I’ve done for you? Fed you. Sheltered you. And this is how you treat me? Like a stranger?”

  The demon had broken from my mother’s snobbish speech pattern. But its frozen, ever-present smile disturbed me. I looked at Eloise and nodded again.

  She sprayed the demon again.

  It screamed, the smile temporarily disappearing, as its mouth stretched wide in agony. Still no steam though.

  I looked away from the page. “Jesus has dominion over this human. Jesus sacrificed for her sins. And Jesus commands you to identify yourself: what is your name?”

  The demon regained its self-control, but it glared at me. “You are not Little Miss Perfect. Yes, I know the truth, Jocelyn. You, too, are susceptible to mistakes…but was it really a mistake? Even at four years old, how could you do something like that? No, it had to be intentional.”

  Eloise waved a hand across my field of vision. “Don’t listen to it. Focus on the sounds it makes. Concentrate on how its voice is changing. What you’re doing is working. Think about how its face is changing. Don’t listen to the words it speaks.”

  But she didn’t know what I’d done. If Eloise knew the truth, she’d look at me differently. Nona said that demons conferred with each other while they were out of their body, and for that to happen, they had to be around us at any given moment, or pivotal moments where we’d sinned. And this demon or another one had been there, seen what happened, watched what I’d done.

  “The family dog, Jocelyn, how could you?”

  Tears collected in my eyes.

  “Don’t listen,” said Eloise, anger marking her tone. “It’s the past. It’s over. Don’t go back there.”

  “Your father and I thought you were a harmless child, a beautiful child. But you proved us wrong.”

  “Whatever it was,” Eloise said, “God has forgiven you.”

  “Our sweet dear old golden retriever, Snickers, the dog we took home because you begged us to for weeks, the dog we let you name after your favorite candy bar. How could you, Jocelyn?”

  Eloise didn’t interrupt this time. She didn’t wave a hand across my eyes to distract me from paying attention to the entity. She was motionless, silent.

  And who could blame her after what I’d done to the creature I’d loved more than anything in the history of my life? I’d wanted Snickers to wear “jewelry” around his neck like the candy necklaces I wore, but my mother said Snickers would try to eat it, so he couldn’t play with me. That didn’t seem fair, because that’s what dogs are supposed to do: play with kids.

  So I used the tight, thick rubber bands I found that grocers used to pack produce tightly, and wrapped one around Snickers’ neck. Yes, he whimpered, but I thought he liked it, that he was happy that we dressed up together, so I added one more. I was rewarded with another whine. How could I resist sharing my favorite part of dress-up with Snickers? So I slipped another rubber band around his neck.

  After that, he scampered away from me. I loved playing with him, so I ran after him until I caught him, and because it was summer and it was so hot, he started breathing heavy because he had such a thick coat of hair, so to make him feel better, I wrapped another taut rubber band around his neck.

  This time, he tried to get up from the ground, but his body was shaking. He couldn’t walk steadily either. I wondered why he was playing so weirdly, and then he started wheezing and fell to the ground. When I saw him from the side, I noticed slick red liquid around the fur at his neck.

  That’s when my mother came running. She saw our dog strangling to death and called out for me to get scissors or a knife, so she could cut the rubber bands from around his neck, but I kept staring at him as I finally realized that I’d caused him to bleed, to gasp for air, that I’d actually been killing him.

  Soon enough, Noelle brought a pair of scissors to my mother, who freed the rubber bands from around Snickers’ neck. Afterward, my mother gave me a tongue-lashing. Snickers never acted the same around me. He always watched me with cautious eyes and always did his best to avoid me. My mother treated me the same way. But my father didn’t. He consoled me, told me it wasn’t my fault, that it was a mistake, that he forgave me. But because my mother looked at me as if I were a psycho, she severed a large portion of affection for me. As a result, I heaped all my love, trust, and attention onto my father.

  “Did you kill John Doe?” the demon now asked me. “Like you tried killing Snickers?”

  Reliving that experience again, after having pushed it deep into the corners of my mind, I began shaking.

  Eloise placed her hands on either side of my face, turned my head toward her, and gazed into my eyes. “You were a child. You didn’t know. It was a mistake. Your dog forgave you.”

  I shook my head. “He was never the same after that. After I tried to—”

  “He’s gone now. He knows the truth. He’s in Heaven. I’ll bet he’s sitting at God’s side right now, watching you. In fact, I know it. I can feel it. Can’t you?”

  I shook my head free from Eloise’s grasp. “I can’t…” I broke into a sob. “I can’t do this.”

  “It’s okay, honey,” my mother’s voice said. “I didn’t mean to be so nasty that day. I’ll forgive you…if you forgive me?”

  “No,” Eloise said, once more placing both hands on my cheeks. “Don’t listen to that thing,” she said, practically spitting out that last word.” You know the truth. You don’t need to look far. It’s in your heart. Follow its lead. The Holy Spirit is there, reaching out for your hand, to give strength. Take it. That’s all you have to do. Believe, Jocelyn. Trust that Jesus is with you.”

  “Has he ever helped you, Jocelyn?” my mother’s voice asked. “Has he really? Because I’ve always been in this very house. If you’ve ever needed anything, I’ve been here. I may not have been the person you wanted me to be, but I was the mother I needed to be. But after the day I walked away from you, you became your own person, strong and independent. I didn’t think you needed me anymore.”

  I shook my head, knowing that a demon spoke to me, but its voice sounded so empathetic and so genuinely sorry, the same way I’d always envisioned Lilah would one-day act upon seeking forgiveness. And I wanted to believe it so badly.

  “Don’t listen to it,” said Eloise. “It’s not your mother. If you really wanted to know what your mother thinks of you, you’ll need to ask her, but don’t trust these lies.”

  I shook my head.

  “Jesus is beside you. Let Him guide you. Take His hand. That’s all you have to do. Take it. Walk with Him. Let Him show you the way. Do that and you may falter, but He’ll always be there to help pick you back up.”

  My breath hitched in my chest. Tears rolled down my eyes. And my vision cleared. So did any confusion in my heart. Tremendous calm overcame me. All sense of doubt and indecision had vanished from my mind. I was confident and at peace. Despite having not slept in so long, or maybe even because of it, I had never been so clearheaded before.

  I knew what I had to do. And I needed to get on with it.

  “Demon,” I said, my voice firm and strong. “Jesus Christ speaks through me. He demands your name.”

  The entity’s face contorted, shook from side to side. It bolted toward us.

  Eloise shot another jet of holy water into the demon’s face.

  The demon staggered backward. It raised its hands to its cheeks and eyes, trying to smear the moisture from its face. This time, steam lifted from its face.

  I approached the entity. “What is your name, demon?”

  It backed into the wall, tripped to the ground, and its legs squiggled underneath it. “No. We will not tell you. Do you hear us? We will not!”

  I looked to Eloise but pointed at the demon. “Again!”

  My partner sent another silo of holy water at the demon.

  More steam. More shrieking. More slipping around on the floor.

  “Jesus is patient with humans,” I said. “He is not patient with leeches like you. Give Him
your name.”

  The demon writhed on the ground, its appendages contorting into awkward angles. It gnashed its teeth. Strange crackles erupted from its mouth.

  “Your name, demon. What is it?”

  “Fuck you! We won’t give you shit!” But its head shook, convulsed, as though fighting exterior forces that prevented it from acquiescing.

  “Say it. Jesus demands your name. Give it. Now!”

  “Adeleidel!”

  I let out a heap of air, winded. Another win. A bigger one, this time.

  “Jocelyn.” The voice was deep and raspy as if sandpaper had been scraped against its vocal cords.

  I looked down at the demon. It had stopped moving and now lay limp. It hadn’t spoken.

  “Mmmm. I smell your pussy juice.”

  The demon had not spoken! So where had the voice come from? Was I hearing things? I turned to Eloise.

  She stared at me with her mouth ajar. “What’s wrong? Keep going.”

  “Such a sweet scent.”

  “You don’t hear that?” I asked, scanning the area around us. No one but the three of us inhabited the room. Could the voice have emanated from the kitchen? No. It sounded too quiet, as if someone had whispered it into my ear.

  “Spread those legs. We’d like a taste.”

  Behind me, the feet of the sofa rattled, wood knocking on wood. The picture frames rumbled against the wall. In the kitchen, the pots and pans on the stovetop jangled. The table slammed up against the wall.

  Startled, I jumped at the same time as Eloise, who turned around to check on the disturbance. I was breathing much too fast. Sweat had broken out on my forehead. And I was worried that the demon would somehow manage to hurl objects in the room at me: the magazines on the cocktail table, the glass on the end table, the coat rack near the entrance. Anything seemed possible.

  An abhorrent scent whipped mere inches from my nose and swept around me, filling my nose, my mouth, my eyes. My hair lashed at my face, eliciting nicks on my flesh, as though someone had swiped at it with a razor blade.

  For it to sting so painfully, the gust of air rushing past my eyes, making me blink every second to work moisture into them, must’ve hit tropical storm level winds. Instinctively, my abdomen tightened and my muscles tensed, bracing for a fight.