The Exorcist's Apprentice

by Mark Lukens

  But they didn’t go up into the attic.

  And they didn’t unlock the padlock on the door under the stairs that led down to the basement. As Danny walked behind Paul and listened to the monotone chanting of Father Hopkins, he wondered why they would bless all of these rooms but not enter either the basement or the attic.

  As they walked, Danny took Paul’s advice and tried to reach out to God. But at this moment Danny was angry with God.

  God had let his mother and his sister be taken from him. He had let a group of demons come after him and his family. If he was supposedly so important to God and this war on evil, then why hadn’t God protected him and his family more? He wanted to cry out to God, curse Him. Strike Him if he could.

  He wasn’t ready to forgive God yet.

  †

  Father Hopkins and Father Severino left the house after a late dinner of leftover meatloaf and mashed potatoes that Helen had heated up. Danny didn’t usually like meat loaf, but this was good. Either that or he was very hungry.

  After their dinner, both priests and Paul sipped whiskey.

  Apparently it was okay for priests to drink. Danny didn’t know. He didn’t really know anything about religion. He wasn’t sure if his mother had ever even believed in God or not. She never talked about it and she never made them go to church. She even criticized religion as a terrible institution that had caused more suffering and more death throughout history than all other causes combined.

  After their drinks, Paul walked both priests to the gray sedan while Danny helped Helen clean up the kitchen. He saw Paul talking to the priests, and they seemed to be having a long and animated conversation out there underneath the light over the garage. Their breaths clouded up in front of their faces as they talked. It almost seemed to Danny like Paul was giving the two of them instructions, or perhaps chastising them for something. Danny wasn’t sure.

  All three of them glanced back at the kitchen window like they knew they were being watched.

  “Thank you for your help, Danny,” Helen said, tearing his attention away from the kitchen window.

  “No problem,” he said as he dried the last of the dishes and handed them to her so she could tuck them away into the cabinets.

  Helen was a slim woman, a little shorter than Danny. She had brown hair and light brown eyes. She seemed to Danny to be the epitome of the American homemaker; if Hollywood wanted to cast someone in that role, he was sure Helen would get the job.

  But there was something slightly off about Helen and her husband, something so subtle that he couldn’t put his finger on it. Danny felt terrible for feeling this way, but he could tell that there was something fake about them, something a little over-the-top. A role played a little too convincingly, a little too perfectly, a cliché.

  †

  Danny went to bed a few hours later. The inside of the house was so dark out here in the middle of nowhere, especially underneath an overcast ceiling of clouds that promised more snow in the near future. He left the light on next to the bed, an antique lamp made from brass—maybe it was meant to match the bed frame.

  He checked his IPod to make sure it was charged, and then he stuck the earbuds in his ears and lay down on the bed. He stared up at the ceiling until his eyes closed. He was exhausted from the whole day—the drive here, the new experiences, the return of his visions. He just wanted to float away into a black and dreamless sleep for one night.

  But the nightmares were waiting for him.

  CHAP†ER †WEN†Y-EIGH†

  Danny was submerged in the dark, churning water. He was trapped inside the sinking car with the seatbelt cinched tightly over his shoulder and chest, the deflated airbag swaying in the water in front of him.

  The world around him was dark and getting darker. The only light came from the dashboard lights that gave off a flickering, greenish glow underneath the roaring water, and from the headlights at the front of the car that shined their beams out at the endless blackness of the water.

  The lights were getting dimmer, maybe shorting out, but Danny still had enough light to see his own hands struggling with the seatbelt as he pushed the clinging remnants of the airbag away. He was trying desperately to get the seatbelt unclipped and free himself.

  And there was still enough light to see a pale hand reach in to try to help him.

  His mother’s hand.

  Danny looked at the driver’s seat and saw his mother floating there between her seat and the deflated air bag that had shriveled in the dark water like a dead jellyfish. Her eyes were wide open, staring at him. Her mouth was wide open, letting the water flow into her mouth, but there were no bubbles coming back out. She wasn’t even trying to breathe anymore.

  She was already dead.

  Danny got his seatbelt unhooked and wriggled out of it. He tried the button to roll down the passenger window, but nothing happened. It was shorted out.

  He looked into the backseat and saw his sister pinned to the seat by a lap belt, but her arms floated free beside her, her dark hair floating around her face like a sea anemone’s petals.

  And her eyes were wide open.

  She stared right at Danny.

  A hand grabbed Danny—his mother’s hand.

  He looked back at her and now her face was inches away from his own, her mouth was moving like she was trying to say something to him.

  Danny jumped awake in bed, sitting up and breathing hard, his heart pounding against his ribcage.

  It was morning. A dull light invaded the room through the blinds of the only window. The air was chilly.

  For a panicked moment Danny couldn’t remember where he was. He knew he wasn’t in his bed in his old house in Cleveland. No, he had gone to live with his father after his mother and sister had died in a car crash.

  And the ache hit him like a sledgehammer in the heart. He had been dreaming about that car crash, the moments underneath the dark water. He had been remembering some of it—pieces of the terrible accident were beginning to come back to him.

  Danny let out a sigh that sounded more like a choked sob as a shudder ran through his body. At least he had finally slept through the night. He knew that both his mind and his body needed the rest.

  He could hear murmurings from somewhere downstairs, people talking quickly in hushed whispers. The conversation seemed urgent, almost heated even though the voices were low.

  One of the voices was Paul’s.

  Danny decided to get out of bed and sneak down the hall to the stairs, get closer to the conversation so he could hear what they were saying. He was reminded of the day of his mother and sister’s funeral when he had been in his grandmother’s house and he had heard her and Paul talking in the living room, making their plans to send him away.

  He swung his legs out from under the covers and dropped his feet down to the floor.

  But his feet struck liquid and they disappeared down below ten inches of dark, murky water.

  He stared down at his bedroom floor in disbelief. The whole floor was covered with the dark water.

  Like lake water.

  Danny stared down at his legs. His feet were submerged under the water and no longer visible. And then he realized that his feet weren’t even touching the floor anymore.

  How deep was this water?

  He could tell that there was something moving around in the water near his feet—something large and pale.

  His mother’s milky white face emerged up from under the water, breaking the dark surface, sending black ripples spreading away in concentric circles from her full-moon face and dead black eyes. She opened her mouth and black water spilled out like an oil slick. Tiny fishlike and wormlike creatures wiggled out of her mouth as her head lifted up higher out of the water.

  “Come down here, Danny,” his mother said in a croak.

  Danny realized that his mother’s whispers were competing with the voices he had heard earlier from downstairs. But those voices were so much closer now. And they had changed. They weren
’t arguing with each other. Now they were chanting in some strange language that sounded like the same language Father Hopkins spoke when they walked in a conga line blessing this house. He recognized his own name in that strange language they were whispering. They were saying something about him, chanting something about him.

  The voices were so close now—right outside his bedroom door.

  His mother’s arm shot up from the water, splashing the thick muck everywhere. She grabbed Danny’s leg.

  Her face was different now. Angry. Accusing.

  “Come down here with me right now, Danny! It’s so lonely down here without you!!”

  Danny screamed and tried to yank his leg out of his mother’s grasp, but she was too strong. She pulled on him, trying to pull him off the bed and down into the water with her.

  He tried to kick at her with his free leg, but she grabbed that one with her other hand and yanked even harder.

  Danny grabbed the brass headboard with one hand and a fistful of sheets and blankets with the other one. But he couldn’t stop her from pulling him down deeper into the water. It was like his legs were attached to a winch that slowly and relentlessly tugged at him, pulling him down deeper into the darkness. He was already halfway off of the bed, his back bent backwards, muscles stretching, joints popping.

  Then his hands slipped …

  “Danny!!”

  It seemed like the voices from out in the hallway were so close now—right inside his bedroom now; right beside his ear.

  And this one was Paul’s voice.

  “Danny, wake up!

  Danny opened his eyes and saw Paul’s face right in front of his. His dark eyes were concerned, his mouth drawn down in a frown. He felt Paul’s hand gripping his arm and he realized he was half on and half off of the bed, his back bent backwards in a painful position just like it had been in the dream.

  He jumped fully awake and struggled back up onto the bed. He felt Paul helping him.

  “You had a nightmare,” Paul said. “You were dreaming.”

  Danny pushed himself up on the bed, lifting his feet off the floor. He stared down at the floor, but it was the same old wood planking—no murky black water. The bedroom door was wide open like Paul had slammed it open. There were no other people out in the dark hall huddling together, whispering and chanting.

  Just Paul.

  Just a nightmare.

  “You okay?” Paul asked. He took a step back and stared at Danny.

  Danny finally nodded. He couldn’t talk for a moment. His throat was so dry. He swallowed with effort. He could feel a film of sweat all over his skin even though the room was cold. The back of his thermal shirt was soaked with sweat. His body trembled. He couldn’t stop shaking.

  “Danny? What did you see?”

  “A … a … another nightmare. I’ll be okay.”

  †

  After a quick shower in the guest bathroom upstairs, Danny brushed his teeth and got dressed in a pair of baggy jeans, a fresh long-sleeved thermal shirt, and his sneakers. He slipped a big rugby shirt over his thermal and pushed the sleeves up to his elbows.

  This bathroom, like the rest of the house, seemed to be in the middle of a massive renovation. But like all of the other rooms, it had been suddenly abandoned. It seemed to Danny like Robert and Helen had started remodeling every room at the same time instead of starting on one room or one area at a time. It seemed strange to him, but he wasn’t sure why. It seemed like it was some kind of clue that was staring him in the face, but he just wasn’t able to decipher it.

  But what did he know? He wasn’t an expert at remodeling houses. The closest he’d ever gotten to a renovation was helping his mom paint the kitchen and rearranging the furniture. Anything beyond those skills and his mom had always paid a professional to do it.

  Danny was still a little shaken up from his nightmare this morning. It cloaked him and didn’t want to let him go.

  Like his mother’s cold, wet fingers …

  He squeezed his eyes shut, pushing the image away. He opened his eyes again and stared into the mirror. He needed to get a grip here.

  Paul had told him breakfast was ready downstairs. And despite the terror he’d been through, he felt his stomach growling.

  Pancakes. That’s what Paul told him Helen had made for breakfast. Danny thought he might even be able to smell them all the way up here.

  †

  Danny ate two plates of pancakes smothered in butter, jam, and syrup. He washed them down with two large glasses of ice-cold milk.

  After breakfast, he helped Helen with putting the food away and doing the dishes.

  Paul and Robert went to the sitting room with Father Hopkins and Father Severino who had made it to the house in time for breakfast.

  “You have a beautiful house,” Danny told Helen as he dried a plate and handed it to her. The woman was so quiet, especially around him, and he felt like he needed to say something to her to open up a conversation. Besides, he had a question he wanted to ask her and he wasn’t sure how to ask it.

  “Oh, thank you,” Helen answered, taking the plate from him and setting it carefully in one of the upper cabinets over the counter.

  She seemed nervous.

  “It’s a wreck right now,” Helen said when she turned back to Danny. “But this … when this is all over and we can fix the rest of it up, it will be so much nicer.”

  Danny hesitated, not sure how to ask his question, but then he just blurted it out. “What kind of things have been happening here in your house? What kind of hauntings?”

  Helen took another dried plate from Danny and put it away in the cabinet. She didn’t answer for a full minute, her nervous smile slipping from her face. Her face had suddenly turned a darker shade of red. She looked scared. Or maybe angry.

  “It’s all right if you don’t want to talk about it,” Danny said, suddenly sure that he had offended her somehow. But it had been bothering him for a little while now. Father McFadden had sent them here because this house was supposedly haunted, possessed by an evil force. Yet he hadn’t heard anyone here talk about anything that had been going on. He hadn’t seen any evidence of a haunting. Unless he counted his terrifying nightmares and the ghost-girl he’d seen in the living room. But no one else had said anything about what they had seen in the house so far.

  Helen nodded and seemed relieved not to re-live the terrors she’d gone through inside this house.

  Danny dried a frying pan and held it up. “Where does this go?”

  “The pantry. That door over there.”

  Danny walked across the kitchen to a small door tucked in the corner between the refrigerator and the dishwasher at the end of the counter with the sink in it. He opened the door and saw a small room with shelves lining the walls. The shelves were crammed with canned and boxed goods. On the lowest shelf were some extra pots, pans, and small kitchen appliances like mixers, food processers, and a toaster. On the floor underneath this shelf were fifty pound sacks of salt stacked on top of each other.

  He set the pot on the shelf and turned and nearly walked right into Miss Helen who stood right in front of him.

  “Thought you might have gotten lost in there,” she said with a fake smile.

  Danny smiled back and then brushed past her quickly.

  †

  They all gathered in the sitting room after breakfast. Two extra chairs had been brought in from the formal dining room table in the dining room across the hall. Candles were lit and bibles were stacked up on the coffee table. Both Father Hopkins and Father Severino were dressed all in black with the white squares on the front of their collars. They both had purple stoles laid over their shoulders.

  Some kind of incense burned from the metal ball and chain that Danny had seen Father Hopkins carrying around the day before. He wanted to ask what the ball and incense were for, but he didn’t want to sound stupid.

  After fifteen minutes of whispered prayers led by Father Hopkins where he asked the Lord for strength
for himself and for everyone in the room, they stood up.

  It was going to be like the day before—all of them following Father Hopkins from room to room as he chanted in Latin while everyone else (except Danny) prayed silently.

  But this time was a little different. Some of Father Hopkins’s prayers and chants were in English rather than Latin.

  “Oh God, hear our prayers and drive these demons out of this place and send them scurrying away.” And then he suddenly shouted at the room they were in. “You are not welcome here, demons!! I command you in the name of Jesus to leave this place!! Go back to where you came from!!”

  They had walked from the sitting room into the hallway, and then they entered the dining room, all of them following Father Hopkins as he walked slowly around the dining room table, making his way back to the archway that led back out into the wide hallway. The father’s voice echoed back down from the nine foot ceiling as he read from an old prayer book clutched in his hands.

  Father Severino held the metal ball that dangled from the decorative chain. A sweet scent drifted out of the metal ball and Danny walked through the mist it left behind.

  As they entered the hallway again, ready to walk down to the archway to the kitchen, ready to re-walk the same route as yesterday, they all stopped in their tracks.

  A sound came from upstairs—the sound of stomping feet, like someone was running around up there.

  To Danny, the footsteps didn’t sound heavy. They sounded quick and light. Like the sound a child’s footsteps might make.

  A little girl?

  “I said leave this place, Unclean Spirit!!” Father Hopkins roared and rushed towards the foot of the stairs. He gripped his now-closed prayer book in one hand, his knuckles turning white. He had produced a gold crucifix from under a layer of his cassock and he held it out in front of him like it was a shield.

  He hurried up the steps, the wood creaking and popping as Father Severino rushed up the steps right on his heels. Danny and Paul were right behind them. But Robert and Helen remained downstairs, watching with wide eyes from the bottom steps, huddled together.

  Danny, Paul, and the two priests searched the upstairs hallway. They searched each room, starting with Danny’s room, and then Paul’s room. They checked under beds, peeked inside closets, checked windows. Then they checked the guest bathroom. Then the master bedroom.