The Exorcist's Apprentice

by Mark Lukens

  Paul whispered to Danny to wait in the hall as the priests searched the master bedroom—Robert and Helen’s room.

  Danny waited as the three men entered the bedroom near the end of the hall. All three of them had passed right by the lone door at the end of the hall without even looking at it.

  When Paul came back, walking slowly and defeated, Danny gestured towards the door.

  “What about that door?”

  “It goes to the attic,” Paul answered. “It’s always locked.”

  “Maybe it was unlocked. Maybe,” and Danny almost said ‘the girl’ because he envisioned the girl he’d seen yesterday running around up here, “… maybe the spirit went through that door.”

  “No,” Paul said a little too sharply. “It’s just a demon trying to trick us. Torment us.”

  Danny thought about pushing more. He thought about questioning why they weren’t searching the attic. Or the basement. How come when they toured the house, they didn’t bless these two areas: the literal bottom and the top of the house?

  But he didn’t question Paul. He remembered Paul’s words on the drive here: An apprentice doesn’t question anything—he just performs the tasks immediately and without question or hesitation.

  Father Hopkins and Father Severino came back and shook their heads slightly, indicating that they hadn’t found anything.

  †

  They performed several more tours of the house, blessing it and praying, Father Hopkins leading the way. He either shouted at the demons to leave or he read prayers in Latin from his worn prayer book.

  They stopped for a late lunch at three o’clock in the afternoon. Everyone looked spent and exhausted.

  Danny had to admit that he felt drained even though all they had been doing was walking around and praying. Also, even though he had awakened from that horrible nightmare this morning, he had slept through the night for the first time in weeks. He thought he should be somewhat rested, but he wasn’t.

  His mind drifted back to the nightmare this morning. But then he thought of his dream before that—his first real memories of the car accident.

  Were those memories coming back to him now whether he wanted them to or not?

  An hour later both of the priests had left the home. Danny, Paul, Robert, and Helen were sitting at the kitchen table with cups of coffee in front of them. Outside the kitchen window, it had begun to snow again.

  Danny stood up and excused himself, letting them know he was going up to his room.

  Helen stared at Danny like he was crazy to be going anywhere alone in this house right now, but she didn’t say anything.

  Paul nodded, indicating that Danny was excused, and then Danny left the kitchen.

  He walked up the stairs to the hallway. He was about to enter his room, but then he stopped and looked at the door at the end of the hallway—the door to the attic.

  It looked like it was open.

  CHAP†ER †WEN†Y-NINE

  Danny walked down the hallway, choosing his footsteps carefully, already learning where the loud creaks and pops were in the floorboards. Moments later he stood in front of the door to the attic.

  It was open just a crack.

  Danny just stared at it. He could see nothing except blackness beyond the crack in the door.

  He looked back, half-expecting Paul to come rushing up the stairs. He felt like he was doing something wrong, like he was breaking some unsaid rule about going into a room that had been forbidden to him.

  But no one had told him he couldn’t go into the attic. Or the basement. If these rooms were forbidden, then wouldn’t someone have said something to him by now?

  Danny turned back to the door and pushed at it gently, like a cat hesitantly touching some new strange object found on the floor.

  The door opened just a bit when he pushed on it. He had expected the door to creak open, screeching into the still and silent air, but it had opened like it was well-oiled.

  He was here as an apprentice, an assistant to Paul, and maybe it was his duty to check this room. Maybe it was his duty to see what lay beyond this door that was now opened up to him.

  Opened by whom? By what?

  He hesitated for a moment, suddenly afraid.

  But he had seen such horrible things already. How could what might lie beyond this door be any worse than what he’d already seen? And if he was ever going to learn to combat the dark forces that were after his family line, then he would need to start somewhere.

  Danny pushed on the door a little more and it opened all the way. The light from the hallway spilled into the stairwell revealing twelve steps up to a landing where the stairs turned sharply to the left and then disappeared up into the darkness.

  He wondered for a moment if he should go back downstairs and let Paul know that the door was open. But what if he left and then it was locked again when they came back up here to check it out? Maybe he should call down to Paul, Robert, and Helen while he waited in front of the door.

  But he decided not to. He felt like he needed to face this on his own.

  He noticed a light switch on the wall just inside the doorway. He flipped the switch and a light came on far up the stairs around the corner.

  He wondered if he should block the door open with something, but then he made himself enter the doorway and push away his thoughts of fear. He tried to look at it like this was a mission he was on, an adventure. Like he was a treasure-seeker stepping into an unknown cavern and following clues.

  Danny crept up the stairs to the landing. He made the sharp turn to the next flight of narrow steps that led up to a door.

  Maybe this door would be locked.

  He climbed the steps quickly and the cracked plaster walls seemed to close in on him. He got to the top landing in front of the door and twisted the old-fashioned glass door handle.

  It turned easily.

  Danny pushed the door open and saw the attic laid out before him. Much of the massive room was in shadows, but a series of windows along both short walls lit the large room up with the gray late afternoon daylight from outside.

  The room was like another whole floor to the house. The ceiling went up to a peak high above him with bare rafters showing. There were some pieces of fiberglass insulation stuck between the rafters here and there, but much of the insulation was gone. The floor was made up of unfinished plywood panels nailed down to the floor joists. The center of the room was dominated by the brick chimney stack that went up and out of the ceiling, sealed around the top with black tar and metal flashing.

  Around the perimeter of the room were more stacks and boxes of storage. There were pieces of furniture stacked on top of each other. It seemed like so much stuff up here for just two people.

  One corner caught Danny’s eye and he walked around the chimney to investigate it more closely. He stepped gingerly on the floorboards, testing the integrity with each step even though the floor looked solid and strong.

  He stood in front of pieces of a bed. The framework of the headboard and footboard were frilly and feminine. It had been painted white a long time ago, but much of the paint was peeling off.

  It was a girl’s bed. And beside the pieces of the bed and mattress was a small baby carriage with a baby doll tucked down inside; the doll was swaddled up in a dirty blanket. A white dresser with an assortment of Barbie doll stickers stuck on the drawer fronts stood next to the disassembled bed. There were stuffed animals poking their heads out of a black garbage bag, their glassy black eyes staring at Danny. There was a stack of cardboard boxes labeled GAMES and another one labeled TOYS. Two suitcases stood next to a bookcase stuffed with children’s books and magazines. The bookcase was painted the same shade of white as the dresser.

  Why was all of this stuff up here?

  Robert and Helen told him that they didn’t have a daughter. They said that they’d never had any children.

  But here was a whole bedroom set stored up in the attic behind a locked door.

  And that g
ot him wondering even more now what might be hidden down in the basement. The attic door had been merely locked, but the basement door was locked even more securely with a padlock.

  Danny wondered why this door to the attic was unlocked now. Who had unlocked it? Who wanted him to see this stuff up here?

  He heard a noise from behind him, like the scraping of a shoe against the gritty plywood floor.

  He whirled around, his body crouched like a cat ready to bolt.

  But he didn’t see anyone.

  Maybe it was time to go. It was already getting very dark up here now that the sun was setting low on the horizon somewhere beyond that forest of skeletal trees.

  Danny hurried back to the attic door, still trying to move silently. He hurried through the doorway and spun around on the small landing to close the door. He crept down the steps to the other door that led out to the hallway. He flipped off the light switch and stepped out of the stairwell. He closed the door, but he couldn’t lock the door because he needed a skeleton key.

  As soon as he had closed the door, he heard the sound of footsteps rushing up the steps from downstairs.

  Someone was coming upstairs.

  He wasn’t sure why he was panicking, but he didn’t want to be caught standing in front of the attic door. He couldn’t make it all the way to his bedroom, so he ducked into the hall bathroom. He closed the door and flushed the toilet and then hurried over to the sink to wash his hands.

  Why was he sneaking around? What was he afraid of? He hadn’t done anything wrong, had he? Shouldn’t he be sharing this news with the rest of them? With Paul, at least?

  He told himself that he needed time to think about this. He wasn’t sure why, but he was sure that Robert and Helen were lying to him about having a daughter.

  Danny stared into the mirror and saw that his face was flushed. He washed his face, cooling it off with the water. He dried off with a towel that was hung on a rack attached to the now wallpaperless wall.

  He left the bathroom.

  When he stepped out, Helen waited right in front of the door. She stood in front of him, smiling at him, just watching him with her brown eyes that seemed to have grown darker suddenly.

  “Everything okay, Danny?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, nodding almost violently. “Just needed to use the bathroom,” he said like he needed to explain his departure from the room. “I’m going to lie down for a few minutes. I’ve got a headache.”

  “Oh …” Helen said with what Danny was suddenly sure was fake sympathy. “Do you need some aspirins?”

  “No, thanks. I’m just going to rest my eyes. I’ll be okay after that.”

  Helen looked a little nervous as she watched Danny, and she still wasn’t moving out of his way.

  Danny slinked past her and walked down the hall to his bedroom, feeling Helen’s eyes on him the whole time.

  †

  Danny jumped awake in his bed.

  It was still somewhat light outside, but he could tell it was almost night.

  He must have really dozed off for a few minutes. Thank God he had turned on his lamp next to the bed. He didn’t want to wake up in the darkness.

  For a moment he thought he had dreamt of going up into the attic and finding a girl’s bedroom set. But after coming fully awake, he knew it was true, he had really been up there, he had really seen the girl’s bedroom set. And then he remembered Helen standing outside the bathroom when he had come out. The way she stared at him; it was like she knew that he’d just done something wrong.

  He remembered hurrying past her to his bedroom and ducking inside. He had closed the door and locked it. He had stretched out on the bed and put his earbuds in and turned on his iPod. He had closed his eyes and then he must have drifted off to sleep almost immediately.

  A knocking at his door startled him.

  Maybe the knocking had awakened him.

  He got up and unlocked the door with the skeleton key that was sticking out of the lock as quietly as he could. He then walked softly back to his bed. He didn’t want anyone knowing that he had locked himself inside his bedroom.

  “Come in,” Danny said, clearing his throat.

  For a moment no one entered, and Danny began to wonder if he had imagined the knocking sound. Perhaps it was a remnant of a forgotten dream.

  And then he wondered if it might not be a person behind that door right now. Maybe it was something else that had been knocking.

  No … not now …

  The door swung open and Paul stood in the doorway.

  Danny sat on the edge of his bed.

  “You okay?” Paul asked. “Helen said you had a headache.”

  “I did. Just a little one. Lack of sleep, maybe.”

  Paul entered the room a few steps, but he didn’t close the door.

  “I’m better now,” Danny added. “I had a little nap.”

  “Sorry I woke you. Helen just served dinner and I wanted to see if you were hungry.”

  Danny wasn’t really hungry. In fact, he still felt a little nauseous. Just hearing Helen’s name brought back the memory of what he’d seen in the attic.

  “Paul, can I talk to you about something?”

  “Sure.”

  Danny still felt a little funny calling his father Paul instead of Dad, but no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t say the word Dad yet. If Paul was hurt or angered by it, he didn’t show it. He kept a poker face on all the time, a mask of unreadable emotions. Danny wondered if that was a result of the things he had seen and experienced during exorcisms through the years, or if he had trained himself to be this way.

  Would Danny be trained to be like his father?

  Part of him didn’t hate the idea so much, but another part of him wasn’t so sure.

  Paul seemed to interpret the weight of Danny’s request to talk so he turned and shut the bedroom door. He walked over to the dresser and picked up the wooden chair beside it. He brought the chair over to the bed just like he had done yesterday, like sitting down right beside him on the bed was too intimate and he needed to keep a distance between them.

  “What’s wrong?” Paul asked as he sat down in the chair.

  Danny wasn’t sure he could spit it out now that Paul was sitting right in front of him. But he took a deep breath and blurted out the words.

  “Before I came up here to lie down, I noticed that the door to the attic was open.”

  Paul just nodded, his face still impassive, giving nothing away.

  “So I went up there and checked around.”

  Danny braced himself for a display of anger from Paul. Or maybe even disappointment that Danny had searched a locked part of the house without permission, or at the very least without consulting him first. But Paul showed neither anger nor disappointment, just a pensive interest as he seemed to patiently wait for Danny to explain further.

  “There’s a lot of stuff up there,” Danny said. “The attic is like another whole floor up there. And it’s like there are people’s … people’s stuff up there. And there’s a whole bedroom set that belongs to a little girl: a bed, dresser, books, games, toys, dolls.”

  Danny stopped talking, realizing that he had been speaking faster and faster. And a little louder.

  “And you think those things could belong to the little girl you saw yesterday?”

  Danny shrugged. “Is it possible that the girl I saw wasn’t a vision? Could it be possible that she was real?”

  Paul sighed. “A lot of things are possible. But you’ve seen visions before. And you have to be careful of being fooled and manipulated by evil spirits. They can be very convincing.”

  Paul’s dark eyes seemed to say: You’ve seen how convincing these spirits can be, haven’t you, Danny?

  Danny wanted to tell Paul more. He wanted to tell Paul that Helen gave him the creeps, but he kept that little observation to himself for the moment.

  “Robert and Helen asked us here to investigate their home,” Paul said. “First, we must decid
e if the home is really possessed. But since Father Hopkins and Father Severino have already been here for two weeks, we can assume that they’ve already made that judgment. Now we must move on to the second part of why we’ve been invited here—to help drive the dark forces out.”

  “I know. I’m trying to help …”

  Paul just nodded and kept his eyes on Danny the whole time like he was studying him.

  “You’re not upset because I went up there, are you?” Danny asked him.

  Paul shook his head no and gave Danny a small smile. “No. We’re here to investigate. And you said the door was unlocked. You’re allowed to enter any unlocked room you want to.”

  Danny saw an image in his mind of the padlocked basement door and thought of asking about that. But he didn’t.

  “I want you to walk around the house alone if you want to,” Paul continued. “I want you to explore. I want you to use the Gifts you’ve been blessed with. But I also want you to be careful. Remember, above all else, your faith must always be strong.”

  Danny nodded. He felt a little guilty because he hadn’t been praying like Paul had told him to. He just couldn’t make himself do it right now.

  “I can talk to Helen and Robert about what you saw in the attic,” Paul said. “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.”

  Paul must’ve seen the alarm on Danny’s face because he added quickly: “Of course, I’ll talk to them privately.”

  “Okay.” Danny already felt a little better just from getting some of this off of his chest.

  †

  Danny went down to dinner with Paul. He really did feel better now, a little lighter. Maybe there was some rational explanation for the little girl’s bedroom set being locked away in the attic with all of the other boxes and furniture up there. Maybe he had seen another vision. Talking to Paul always brought everything back into perspective, reduced everything to a single focus—their job here.

  Danny was surprised that he was hungry now. They ate fish, mashed potatoes, and broccoli. Fish wasn’t really one of Danny’s favorites, but it tasted good, kind of salty, and he had two helpings.