The Everett Exorcism (World of Shadows Book 1)

by Lincoln Cole

  The woman with the pick turned to face him, eyes focusing on him for just a moment before going back to the glazed look.

  “Kill him.”

  ◆◆◆

  “You know what you’re doing, right?”

  Niccolo didn’t answer Jackson’s question; partly because he didn’t want to cause Jackson any extra concern, but mostly because he didn’t want to say the words out loud and admit that this would make a first for him in more ways than one.

  Instead, he focused on preparing himself mentally for the events about to happen. He focused, first, on his breathing, getting his body under control. His heart pumped rapidly, but he didn’t have time to worry about that. Next, he focused on his environment and the demon in front of him. He reached into his pocket and felt the cool metal of his rosary. It had congealed, but the shape of the cross remained there. From it, he drew strength.

  However, it wouldn’t do him any good here. Resigned, he let it fall back into his pocket and turned his mind to the task at hand. He needed to begin.

  “Hand me the cross,” he said.

  “Here you go.” Jackson picked it up from the coffee table and handed it to him.

  Niccolo held it up before him, studying it and willing it to become an extension of him. It gave a representation of his faith; something he could use to embody his beliefs. Through it came the promise that he did not stand alone in this struggle. He held it to his lips and kissed it.

  Niccolo picked up the Bible and turned to Apostle Matthew. He handed the book to Jackson.

  “Chapter six, verses nine through thirteen.”

  “The Lord’s Prayer?”

  “Keep reciting it, and don’t stop until this has finished.”

  “I can do it in Latin if you prefer.”

  “The words and your heart matter; the language you say them in doesn’t. Recite it cleanly and as loudly as you can until we get done.”

  Jackson nodded and flipped to the requested passage. He trailed his finger down, nodded, and then began reciting. Niccolo listened to him speak, the words echoing in the small room. Jackson spoke clearly with a strong voice, though the words had little effect on Rose or the demon.

  But that was okay: Jackson’s words weren’t for the demon but for Jackson and Niccolo. Just hearing them gave him strength; a familiar litany that encouraged and solidified his resolve that God stood with him. The sound of the words spoken aloud gave him confidence, and the prayers and incantations came back to him.

  “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  Niccolo closed his eyes and called upon the more important verses he had memorized during his education as an exorcist. The incantations that they had drilled into his mind over and over through constant repetition until he could recite them perfectly in his dreams.

  He spoke those prayers, first in English, raising his voice above Jackson’s prayer:

  “In the Name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of Blessed Michael the Archangel, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints. And powerful in the holy authority of our ministry, we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of the devil. God arises; His enemies are scattered, and those who hate Him flee before Him. As smoke is driven away, so are they driven; as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God.”

  His faith welled up inside his chest, swelling forth. He switched to Latin and continued chanting. These words came from the Rituale Romanum and the rites of exorcism. With his eyes closed, he focused only on the chant and the power it gave him at that moment. He had spoken them a thousand times before, but something seemed different this time.

  The verses had power and meaning he had never known existed before now. Demons were real, and not just something he said he believed in because he was supposed to, and it felt like experiencing the prayer for the first time.

  He had made it through the ritual before taking a breath, and then he just stood there. The room around him had gone, and he felt that he stood alone with the demon. He faced it, his enemy. The enemy of Heaven and of Jesus and of God. He would send it away because it didn’t belong here.

  Through the grace of God, he would banish it.

  His heart slowed, the panic subsided, and he gained control over his body. Finally, he opened his eyes.

  The demon sat there on the floor in front of him, the same as before, but its entire demeanor had changed. It still looked arrogant and angry, yet another emotion showed on its face now as well:

  Fear.

  Jackson stood staring at Niccolo and whispering the Lord’s Prayer, yet remained focused on Niccolo. He wore a shocked look on his face.

  Niccolo stared back at him for a moment, and then he nodded. Arthur had told him true; he had everything he needed to exorcise this demon. Resolved, he picked up the bowl of holy water and held it under his arm, dipping his fingers into it.

  The rosary, the garb, the implements that exorcists wore … none of them mattered. Faith and intent mattered. The words focused those things, directing them like a weapon at the demon. The realization for Niccolo came clearly and powerfully and filled him with confidence.

  The demon didn’t stand a chance.

  He flung his fingers forward, splashing water on Rose’s face.

  “You have no power here, Demon,” he said. “Out.”

  The droplets burned where they touched, and the demon hissed. It tried to move away from the priest, but the body had failed too fast. It couldn’t get away. Niccolo dipped his fingers again and flung more droplets onto the demon.

  “You are not wanted here. Christ has power here, not you. You do not belong and must leave.”

  He flung more water, and the demon hissed again. It lifted an arm to block to water, but Niccolo circled the chair. It tried to crawl away, but its legs failed it, and it couldn’t move more than a few inches across the carpet.

  Niccolo set to chanting again, the same litany he had finished only moments before, only this time, he didn’t just recite it from memory. This time, he spoke the words directly to the demon, addressing it personally. He could hardly believe that he’d feared he would forget them.

  How could he forget? They’d become a part of him, and he a part of them.

  This time, the impact the Rituale Romanum had on the demon proved greater. He spoke, calling the demon forth and challenging it with his faith. Clearly and with unmatched vigor, he spoke.

  Jackson stayed next to him, chanting the Lord’s Prayer loudly once more, also in Latin. Their voices echoed in the small room, bouncing off one another and filling it as a symphony. The demon cowered on the floor, pathetic and broken, hissing at them. Niccolo kept circling the demon, splashing it with droplets of water.

  He couldn’t believe it: they exorcised it. They expelled the demon from Rose, sending it away from her body and back to hell. He could sense the tide turning and the demon weakening and knew he achieved the desired effect. The chant separated it from the body, preparing to send it home. Only a few more moments—.

  All of a sudden, a huge crashing sounded against the back door. It caught Niccolo off-guard, and he faltered, stumbling over the litany. It brought a momentary distraction, but enough, though, for him to lose his place in the chant. He fell silent. A moment later, Jackson did, too.

  The room went deathly still.

  Immediately, the courage and strength flowed out of him, leaving him feeling alone and empty. It seemed as if all the light had gotten sucked out of the room and nothing remained.

  Another huge crash came, loud enough that he knew the back door was about to break. The people in the backyard had come to stop him, and they came armed and ready for murder.

  His faith could protect him from the demon, but it gave nothing against their weapons.

  Rose looked like a pathetic and broken lump now, with hair matted to her face and skin red and chafed where t
he water had hit her.

  She made a coughing sound, and then Niccolo realized she sat laughing. It built slowly, maniacal and terrible, punctuated by wet breathing noises.

  “What now, Priest?” she asked in a weak voice. “What will you do now? Your time is up.”

  Chapter 20

  The demons came at Arthur in one big group and outnumbered him five to one. They seemed disorganized, however, and it struck him as unlikely that any of them had received serious training on how to fight.

  The only advantage lay in that they didn’t care about what happened to the hosts, and Arthur did. He would have to take care and pull punches to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone, and that made his job considerably more difficult.

  He had heard chanting and prayers spilling from inside the house, loud enough to make it through the rain. It had stopped, though, a few seconds ago. What had happened?

  Maybe Niccolo had exorcised the demon, and he’d believed wrongly that it would end it. More likely, though, something else had happened, and Niccolo still had to attempt to deal with his fear.

  Arthur kept his distance, letting the demons come to him. The first man came in with an axe, swinging it wildly at his head as if trying to split a log. Arthur sidestepped the attack with ease, moving in close and grabbing the wooden handle with his right hand.

  He pushed the axe away from his body, rotating close to his attacker, and then kicked out. He aimed for the man’s stomach, hitting him a few inches above the groin. The man stumbled back, losing his grip on the axe, and Arthur yanked it loose.

  Then he spun it around so that the flat backside of the axe faced forward and swung it down, clobbering the man in the forehead. He held back on the impact, though, not wanting to do any permanent damage if he didn’t have to.

  The hit made a loud cracking sound when it landed, and the man fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Arthur didn’t get a chance to make sure the guy was okay, however, because the other demons came at him now, too.

  Arthur spun, ducking a swipe from a pick and using the axe handle to block a swing from a man wielding a metal rake. He kept backpedaling across the slick grass, putting distance between himself and the attackers.

  They kept coming, though still in a haphazard and disorganized fashion. Arthur dodged and parried, moving backward and circling so that they couldn’t group up and surround him. He found an opening and used the axe to trip up the woman with the pick. Another strike to the side of her head with the butt of the axe and she went silent as well. Blood ran down her forehead, but he felt fairly certain he hadn’t hit her too hard.

  Three demons left instead of five. More waited on the other side that he would need to deal with, and even though he was effective, it still took too long. The house remained silent, though, which didn’t give a good sign.

  The three demons still circled him. Arthur held up the axe, holding his stance, but they didn’t approach. He didn’t want to go against them because it would force him to give up his advantage.

  “Come on,” he said. “What are you waiting for?”

  They didn’t answer. Instead, as one, they turned toward Rose’s home and sprinted for the front of the house. He knew what they’d gone after.

  Niccolo.

  The defenseless priest.

  It looked like they recognized Arthur as just a waste of time and planned to end this a different way. Arthur glanced around and saw more possessed people running up the roads, and some of them came armed with rifles and handguns.

  “Uh-oh,” Arthur said, sprinting after them.

  ◆◆◆

  “Keep them back,” Niccolo shouted, closing his eyes and trying to regain his focus.

  He tried to remember where he’d reached in the prayer before the distraction, but it proved nearly impossible to remember which line he’d gotten to. When the words flowed in order, they made perfect sense and held together with glue, but trying to pick one out of the middle became an impossible task.

  He would need to start over with his incantation, which would cost them a lot of extra time. Time they didn’t have to spare with an angry mob of possessed civilians bearing down on them.

  “With what?” Jackson asked.

  “I don’t know,” Niccolo shouted back. “Think of something!”

  Another huge thud came at the back door, and this time, wood snapped and assailants tore their way into the kitchen.

  This time, though, a deafening thud also sounded at the front door, much closer and louder. It seemed as if one of the demons stood out front beating on it with a baseball bat.

  The sound and proximity startled Niccolo, and the bowl slipped from his grasp. The plastic fell to the floor and bounced around, spilling what remained of the holy water into the carpet.

  Rose cackled. “Giving up, Priest? But we just started to have fun.”

  Niccolo’s heart raced again, and panic settled in. All his confidence evaporated, washed away by the onslaught. Where had Arthur gotten to? Did he live, or had he got killed?

  Were they all about to get killed?

  “What do we do?” Jackson grabbed his arm and shook him. He stood there wild-eyed and terrified, and Niccolo doubted he looked much better.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “They’re coming from both sides.”

  “We need to—”

  The front bay window smashed open from a hit with a golf club. The glass shattered and flew into the room, and a few shards clipped Niccolo painfully on his exposed skin.

  Blood ran down his face, just under his eye. One of the possessed attackers climbed through the front window, ignoring the broken glass and cutting himself on the shards.

  Everything had gone wrong. They had lost. It had finished, and they couldn’t possibly complete the exorcism. His focus zeroed in on the man climbing through the window, carrying a golf club with murder in his eyes.

  “Father Paladina,” Jackson shouted. He spun, clutching the Bible to his chest, and he had his eyes wide open. “What do we do?”

  Through it all, Rose just kept on cackling.

  Suddenly, the man with the golf club went flying forward. He fell face first into the table in front of the couch and rolled sideways onto the floor.

  Arthur came scrambling in behind him. He had wrapped his coat around his arms to protect against the glass and came in at speed but carefully.

  He slid in, sure and focused in spite of everything. With not a hint of fear on his face, he drew his revolver and stood between Niccolo and the assailants.

  Niccolo pleaded, “Don’t kill them. They’re innocent.”

  “I won’t,” Arthur said. “Not unless I have to. More are on the way, and we need to get out of here.”

  Niccolo heard the words, but they didn’t process correctly in his mind. He couldn’t think straight. Everything seemed muddied, and he realized he was about to die. It came as a sudden insight for him, but one of which he felt certain.

  He was about to die.

  But, if God planned that for him, then that made it all right.

  The thought came unbidden, almost as if not his own thought, and it carried with it strength and conviction. He had known when becoming a priest and exorcist that he might get called upon for a situation that could cost him his life in service of the Lord. He had always prayed that if that ever happened, he could face his death well.

  It surprised him, though, to realize that as soon as he accepted his death, all fear went away. It felt surreal, and he embraced the confidence.

  “I can’t give up.”

  “We have already.”

  “I can do this.”

  “We’ve lost,” Arthur said. “If we don’t leave now, we won’t get another chance.”

  If Niccolo left, he would have abandoned his faith. God had put him here and given him the tools to face down this demon, and if it became his duty to die, then so be it.

  “I know,” he said. “You two should go, but I can’t leave. I won’t.”

  Just s
aying the words gave him courage, and he calmed. A serene peace washed over him, and everything moved more slowly around him. The world had gone into slow motion.

  “What?”

  “You must go,” he said. “Both of you. But I can’t.”

  “You’ll die if you stay,” Arthur said.

  “Then, I will die.”

  Niccolo turned to Rose, picking up his cross and focusing only on the demon in front of him. He pushed all other thoughts from his mind, isolating and separating it all. Too many came to face them all, but that didn’t matter. He could only do what he could do, and that bade him exorcise the demon inside Rose.

  Arthur and Jackson stood behind him, and the rest of the people continued to force their way into the room, but he blocked it all out. Would Arthur and Jackson leave? It didn’t matter anyway. He blocked out everything except for the demon sitting on the floor in front of him.

  “Hello, Rose.”

  ◆◆◆

  When he realized that Niccolo wouldn’t leave the house willingly, Arthur growled in frustration. To get him out of here, he would need to drag him.

  Which would prove nearly impossible with the swarm of people trying to stop them. Dozens of them came, and they all attempted to get to Niccolo. The situation devolved at speed and had gone from dangerous to suicidal.

  Yet, there Niccolo stood in the center of the room, staring at the old woman as though nothing else happened in the vicinity. The young priest stood chanting, exorcising the demon once again. Not loud this time, barely audible, yet still Arthur could hear every word.

  So could the demon. Conviction and certainty weighted Niccolo’s voice.

  “Hasn’t he heard the saying ‘live to fight another day’?” Arthur mumbled under his breath.

  Yet he couldn’t suppress his respect for the priest. In the last few days, Niccolo had changed a lot, and for the better, in Arthur’s estimation.