The Possessed

by Kirk Kilgrave

  “It’s The Breakpoint,” Eloise breathed, “the point where the demon shows its strength and tries to frighten us.”

  My knees quivered. I tensed my arms to keep them from shuddering. I held my breath, determined to outlast the demon’s assault, and got into a defensive stance, holding the Bible. Don’t let your emotions go haywire. Get a grip. Then I could push past this phase and move on to the next one.

  I set my sights on the demon.

  It stared at me with a tiny sneer, unblinking, barely even breathing. Full of hatred, condemnation, and tightly wound rage. Its muscles stretched tight, ready to pounce.

  “The next phase is a two-parter called The Clash,” said Eloise. “Don’t let it—”

  Something crashed to the floor beside me.

  I kept staring at the demon, but if I said one word, it would hear my voice tremble. It would know the fear building inside me. I tried to push it down, squash it, obliterate it. But no matter how hard I tried, the hair on my arms kept rising until they stood on end.

  Stop looking at me. Stop looking at me! Stop looking at me!!!

  It didn’t. If anything, the corners of its lips perked upwards into a gradual smirk.

  “You will not defeat us. We are too strong. We are forever.”

  “No,” I screamed, using my fright to push anger into my voice.

  “Give up. Eloise has given up. Be smart. You will never win.”

  Those words turned my attention, not on the maelstrom whipping around me, but on Eloise.

  She lay on the ground, unconscious. A trickle of blood seeped from her eyebrow and sprayed across the floor. The floor lamp lay on top of her.

  No! Please, God. Don’t do this. Not now!

  Until this moment, my knees had shaken violently from so much pent up trepidation, but with this unwelcome development, they caved. I collapsed in a heap, barely missing Eloise. The Bible fell to the ground, bucked upwards, and a corner with the pointy end jabbed my right temple.

  Crackling laughter, slow yet insistent, loud but fierce, erupted around me.

  I pulled myself closer to Eloise and shoved the floor lamp off her.

  “See?” the demon asked, tittering now in a high-pitched voice. The voice of a child and an old woman intertwined. “It’s no use, Jocelyn.” The chuckling continued. Growing louder. Prouder.

  “Eloise.” My voice sounded like a hiss, the sound of a defeated woman, the sound of a woman on the edge of a mental and physical breakdown.

  “Give in to us. Become one with us. We are legion. We are forever.”

  I placed a hand to Eloise’s rounded cheek and shook it. “Wake up. Please!”

  “Yessss,” the demon said, purring like a feline. “Everyone has left you. They always have. They always will.”

  “Eloise?” Tears threatened to rush into my eyes again. I gritted my teeth to offset the urge to give in, thrusting my diaphragm to produce a taut groan. You can’t cry. You promised. If you cry, you’ll give up. You can’t let that happen.

  “Join us, Jocelyn,” said a male voice in a strong, self-assured tone.

  Its voice sounded so patient and understanding, so respectful and honorable. Not like Jake. Nothing like Jake.

  “They’ve all left you,” said the entity. “Jake left you without saying one word, without even looking back. Just poof! And your father? He deserted you. Lilah? She gave up on you. How could a mother do that? Your sister? After all you’ve done for her? She abandoned you. Snickers left. So did John Doe. Even Father Demetrius. He rejected you when you needed him most. Same thing with Nona. She stranded you. And now Eloise. Did you expect anything different?”

  That’s true. I always had trouble making friends. People never wanted to know me. They averted their eyes, kept on walking. Even those I cared for. They shunned me. Cast me aside. They didn’t care about me. Everyone that ever meant anything to me…all of them. Gone.

  “Join us, Jocelyn. You’ll feel strength. You’ll know strength. No one will ever abandon you.”

  I wanted to end this torture. I wanted a new start. I wanted to trust that voice.

  23

  “Hold your peace,” said a different voice, a familiar voice. One filled with potency and certainty. “God will help you.”

  Whose voice did that belong to? Someone I knew, of course, but that person turned his back on me. I shook my head. Obviously, I’d misheard things. Either that or my brain had created the effect, so I wouldn’t feel so empty, so alone.

  “Our job is to believe,” said the strikingly humble voice. “It’s God’s job to do.”

  “Do you truly believe that, Jocelyn?” asked the poised young man, the one who sounded so much more honest than Jake. “We both know that being is a mythical construct. It is false. It has never existed. It is—”

  “Hold your peace,” repeated the calm, assured voice once more. “Do not fear. God is with you. He will strengthen you.”

  “Lies.” The young man scoffed. “Trickery.”

  “Trust in the Lord,” said the friendly voice, “Submit to Him, and He will make your path straight.”

  I know that voice! From where? From when? My youth! That’s it. As a child growing up. All the way through high school. But then…nothing. The voice had gone silent. Where had I heard it? Why did it feel so important? So dependable?

  “Be strong and courageous. God will not leave you nor forsake you.”

  Scripture. The man was quoting from the Bible. How did he know I needed to hear it, to feel it?

  “Deceit!” said the young man. “Don’t believe it. Don’t trust it.” His tone, now anxious and growing ever more riddled with animosity, transformed into a growl. “Follow us. You’ll never be without those who understand you. Join us.”

  I despised the desperation in its pitch. It seemed fake and filled with mistrust.

  “Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall run and not be weary.”

  Upon hearing those words and trusting them, my soul felt recharged, vibrant and filled with such pure love that tears filled my eyes. But they were not tears of fear or pain but happiness and acceptance.

  The wind died down. The distrustful voices vanished. The stench dissolved.

  Silence and stillness surrounded me, providing clarity of mind, body, and spirit.

  The man who quoted the Bible, the person who recited scripture was…No! Could it be? Had he returned?

  “Father Demetrius?” I jumped to my feet and swiveled to face the front door.

  He stood a few feet behind me, a purple stole decorated with religious iconography splayed across his shoulders. In one hand, Father Demetrius held a thick gold crucifix. In the other, he held a bundle of golden rope.

  Another batch of tears shimmered in my eyes. “You came,” I said, my voice almost failing me. I didn’t know if he’d found his faith, but the resolute glint in his eyes expressed that he believed in me. And maybe, just because I found my faith, maybe I helped him welcome God back into his life.

  “I saw the fright in that young man’s eyes, and I knew that he wouldn’t stand by your side.” The priest took forceful strides toward me with a determined stare. “For the first time in months, God told me I’d be needed.” He glared at something over my shoulders. “He told me to come here.”

  To know that Father Demetrius hadn’t abandoned me and that he’d arrived when I needed him most, as he had throughout my entire life without fail, I felt such an outpouring of gratitude for him that I could only repay it with a beaming smile. But that symbol of thanks would need to wait until another time. More important matters awaited.

  A drawn-out groan arose from the floor. “Damn, that hurt,” said Eloise, cringing as she placed a hand to the cut on her eyebrow, only to immediately recoil. “What happened?”

  “The demon.” I cleared the moisture from my eyes and cheeks. I crouched and lent a hand.

  Eloise placed her palm in mine, and I pulled her up to my right while doing a quick inspection of any in
juries she may have incurred. Other than the slit above her right eye, which she massaged tenderly with her fingers, she seemed to be in good shape. I was just as glad to see her as when she’d arrived on my doorstep a short while ago, and repeated the same words she’d uttered at that time: “Now let’s do this!”

  Eloise gave a curt nod just as Father Demetrius appeared on my left. He gave me an even more resolute nod before turning his undivided attention on the demon.

  I’d notched a victory in the first half of The Clash, but the second, final part of this phase would decide who won the war.

  A putrid scent, the combination of rotten meat and sewage that had warmed under a blistering sun that had swept through the room only minutes ago, now clung to every particle in the house. Reflexively, I dry-heaved, arching my back so that both palms gripped my knees. My body rebelled against me again, but since I hadn’t eaten in longer than I could remember, nothing came out.

  To my right, vomit splashed across the hardwood floor and spackled outward. Eloise gagged again and more projectile flew from her mouth as her knees hit the ground. She heaved again and slapped her palms against the ground at the same moment once more, but she’d rid her stomach of its contents. Regardless, she retched a fourth time and a fifth and crawled across the floor.

  Coughing as he scampered across the floor, Father Demetrius skidded to a stop before the demon. He unwound the rope at his side, and when he had extracted a few feet of it, he reached around the demon, attempting to bind it.

  The demon swung a left hook into Father Demetrius’s face, sending him sprawling to the ground, the rope falling from his fingers.

  After such a long period of inactivity, the demon’s swift, unexpected response startled me, but rather than let it impede the progress I’d made, I placed the Bible on the ground. It had gotten me this far, but from this point forward, it would be of no use. In actuality, I could have set it aside earlier, before The Clash, but I’d clutched onto it because it soothed me and made me feel closer to God.

  My relationship with Lilah was important because, once the demon had revealed itself, it had removed the figurative blindfold from my mother’s eyes. Although still pushed to the side, she could now experience everything that happened, and if I did my job right, she might even fight for her life.

  “You will not have this body,” the demon bellowed with every syllable and consonant grinding out like one long grunt. “It belongs to us.”

  The wind picked up again, only this time it doubled the speed and force of its previous incarnation. The vortex whisked seat cushions from the sofa and sent them into a spiral along with magazines, the coat rack, a couple of glasses Lilah had used for her cocktails, the floor lamp, and picture frames. Countless smaller articles joined it like a handful of paperclips, a granite rock that served as a paperweight, two hardcover books, a pair of Noelle’s tan-colored loafers, and an iron letter opener that speared through the air like a dagger.

  Soon enough, the wind twirled into a cone-like twister, only this one had a specific purpose: to separate me from Father Demetrius and Eloise since I served as the eye of this tornado. My friends, on the outskirts of this supernatural storm, would be wise not to enter the vortex. Doing so might mean getting jabbed in the eye with the letter opener or whacked in the nose with the heavy rock, both of which at this speed might cause instant death.

  Up until this point, I’d searched for an opening, a place I could jump out of the eddy, but when I turned around, I came face to face with the demon, who now stood about ten feet away from me wearing a hideous sneer. The demon made things very clear: it would accept no outside influence during this two-contestant battle for my mother’s soul.

  Thankfully, the spinning wind kept the revolting scent on the fringes of the twister. The same went for the multitude of voices I’d heard earlier.

  “Give up, Jocelyn,” it said. “Your mother is ours…unless you’d care to swap souls. Lilah for yours?”

  I liked how it asked the question, rather than made a statement. That told me the demon didn’t have as much confidence as it appeared to have, based on the circumstances, at least.

  “Never,” I shouted.

  “Are you sure?” The demon raised its right hand and produced a piece of glass, probably a leftover from one of my mother’s cocktail glasses. With the index finger of its opposite hand, the demon placed its finger on the sharpest point. It pressed down, producing a drop of blood.

  “Don’t,” I said, taking a step forward. A second later, I stopped because the demon quickly shifted the shard to its open hand and pressed it against the middle of her palm.

  “Glass can be quite dangerous,” said the demon in an emotionless tone. “Don’t you think?” It carved the sharp tip across an inch of flesh, and a line of blood came to the surface and slid across the crevices in its hand. “Oops.” A shy smile appeared. “Accidents happen!”

  “Stop!”

  “And why should we do that?”

  “Lilah, do you hear me?” I said, hoping to reach her. “I’m fighting for you.”

  “Are you?” asked the entity. “You haven’t raised your fists. I don’t see a knife or gun in your hands. So what kind of fight is this? Might I inquire about the regulations? I’m nothing if not a stickler for the rules.”

  “I know you can hear me,” I said, dismissing the demon’s words. “You’ve got to stop the demon. It’s a fight for your soul. I can’t do this alone.”

  The demon cocked its head to the side, examining my eyes. “We’re beginning to feel…ignored.” It bit down hard on its teeth, forcing its lips to peel back and reveal its gums. “And we do not like to be ignored.” It jabbed the glass into the same palm and sliced across the skin to make an X. Blood instantly spilled from this deeper cut and spread across its palm.

  I dug my hands into my pockets, hoping the demon would see that I did not intend to resort to a fistfight.

  It winced, confused by my actions. A second later, the anger on its face vanished, replaced by the familiar expression of exasperation that could only belong to one person: my mother.

  “Lilah?” I asked, shocked. I didn’t have to wonder whether the demon had attempted to trick me. It had tried numerous times to deceive me, but I’d seen that exact expression every day for the past two decades. A demon with only a few days or even a couple weeks of visitation rights to my mother’s body and mind could never duplicate the look of pure antagonism on my mother’s face.

  “How do I get it out?” she shrieked, a sound that would have come close to rattling the windowpanes if they weren’t already shaking from the gale force winds. Grunting, grimacing, she dropped the glass shard and kicked it out of the circle.

  It got swept up in the vortex.

  On the edge of the gusting wind, Father Demetrius backed away from it, probably fearing the shard of glass might slash his flesh. He wrapped his hands around his mouth, creating a megaphone-like effect. “Speak from your heart.”

  I had so much pent-up animosity and frustration towards my mother that, unless I wanted the demon to keep my mother’s soul, I probably shouldn’t follow Father Demetrius’s advice. I shook my head at him.

  ”Tell her how important she is to you.”

  That I could do. “You’ve treated me like shit for so long that I want to know what it’s like for you to love me.”

  My mother’s pain-stricken expression collapsed a little, as though the words she’d heard had more of an impact than the cuts on her hand. A look of shame mingled with the agony on her face.

  “I told Noelle that I didn’t love you.” I nodded, unable to cry now, because I’d tapped out my reservoir surrounding this issue years ago, after thousands of attempts of trying to make her proud of me, only to watch her lavish that love and affection upon Noelle, who received it freely, as every child should. “What did I ever do that was so bad? Huh? Why did you hate me so much?”

  Lilah’s mouth dropped open, and a silent cry tumbled out. Her hands fell to her s
ides. Tears sprung to her eyes. And blood from her palm pumped out and leaked onto the floor.

  I stepped back, placing a hand over my mouth.

  She glanced down. Shocked at the bloodletting, Lilah flinched and elevated her damaged palm. She covered it with her other hand.

  A moment later, a delirious expression removed the sorrow on her face and replaced it with a wretched glare. “Now, there will be none of that,” the demon said in the wheezing voice of a smoker suffering from emphysema. It looked down at its hand. Surprised not to see the shard of glass, it clutched the damaged hand and squeezed, splitting the flesh in half and pouring gore through its fingers before it spilled to the ground.

  Then it darted towards me before it bashed into me, knocking us to the ground. It delivered a swift jab to my cheek.

  My head snapped to the side, my temple smacking into the ground, issuing a throb that matched the other side of my face where I’d taken a fist to the face. But with the twister mere inches from my head, and my hair threatening to leave my scalp, I had no time to worry about the pain.

  “Hold your peace,” Father Demetrius shouted in the background.

  No, I need to fight back. I need to fight the demon. To beat it out of my mother.

  But would that help my mother? Or hurt her? Conflicted, I stared at the demon, breathing heavy, biting back my resentment.

  The demon straddled my chest. “Join us,” It screeched. “And this will all end. You’ll never know pain like this again. No one will ever harm you.”

  “No!”

  “Put aside the deeds of darkness,” Father Demetrius continued, “and put on the armour of light.”

  Enraged, the demon wound back another fist and rammed it into my other cheek.

  My head spun in the other direction, and a grunt ripped out of my mouth.

  “We will make you beg.” It swiveled me partially onto my side and rammed its fist into my kidneys.

  Pain sizzled in that spot, and I screamed in pain. It felt like hot lava pumped into my stomach. Despite that, I understood the priest’s words, at least with regard to my current situation: I couldn’t fight the demon because I’d be hurting my mother’s body.