by Hailey Piper
She opened the top drawer of Nathaniel’s desk. Stone arrowheads pointed accusingly at her. Ancient coins stared from glass cases. The next drawer held a small mask made of clay, its expression frozen in laughter. The idea that artifacts of another culture carried an inherently demonic presence was ethnocentrism at work, Margaret knew, but something angry could have hitched a ride with Heather’s husband. And then poor Natalie.
Margaret glanced back at his photo on the desk. Greedy, repulsive man. Just what did you bring into your home?
The photo didn’t answer.
“You can stop,” Heather said. She seemed to have composed herself.
Margaret looked up. “Stop?”
“You can stop looking. I know what it is. I think I knew it last night when we were talking. It didn’t occur to me before, maybe because I’d been hoping it was a demon or a lesion. Can you imagine? Wishing that for my own daughter.”
“Mrs. Glasgow—”
“It’s Nathaniel.”
Margaret gently closed the drawer. She had to choose her tone carefully so as not to sound derisive, especially because she didn’t mean to be. “You suspect Nathaniel’s ghost?”
“It feels like him. He’d always eat his meat as rare as he could. When he was drunk he’d stomp around the halls like she does every night. That heaviness and strength.”
“And the anger?”
Heather lowered her head. “I must’ve done something wrong. With the funeral or, I don’t know. Since then.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Margaret stepped around the desk and opened the study doors. She was ready to be free of this place. “We have tests for that, too. We can find out if it’s Nathaniel through a séance. He’s likely to be much less dangerous than a demon.”
Heather followed Margaret out of the study. “How long would it take to get one of those ready?”
“A séance? A week, maybe, to bring my contacts together. Maybe by then your dreams will—”
“No.” Heather yanked the doors shut and thrust the iron key into the lock. “If you had to get him out of her, how long would it take to be ready? If you knew for certain.”
“I could do that myself.” Margaret swallowed. “I could do it tonight. But it’s a ceremony that draws out whatever’s inside her. It’d be dangerous to do that without knowing for certain what it is. We might not be prepared.”
“I don’t care.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“I don’t care about the danger, Ms. Willow, because I care too much about Natalie. We can’t keep going like this, waiting and testing.” Heather brushed past Margaret, back down the hall, and grasped the stairway banister. “Follow me upstairs. I need to show you something in Natalie’s room.”
Margaret recoiled as if the sun had set preemptively and Natalie now stalked the halls of the Glasgow house. But the sun hadn’t set yet. That would be another couple of hours still. Margaret didn’t have an excuse. She followed Heather up the stairs.
Heather wasn’t quiet or subtle about opening Natalie’s bedroom door. In the day, Natalie was no danger. She was just a young girl in a lot of trouble. The window hung wide open, letting in an autumn breeze, but Heather would have to shut and lock it before nightfall.
Margaret couldn’t help but like her room. The walls wore faded magenta paint and parts of them hid behind pencil sketches of different animals. Natalie approached the wilderness with a kinder attitude than her father.
“Come here,” Heather said. She stood to one side of the bed.
Natalie lay in a new nightgown. Her skin remained flushed, like last night. A bag of ice lay half-melted beside her head. The air here was cool. It seemed the heat only spread and infected the world after sunset, but Natalie was stuck with it around the clock.
“I get her up to drink every hour or so. She’ll use the bathroom.” Heather ran her hands through Natalie’s damp hair. “Nathaniel inside her is getting stronger, but that’s not a physical thing. Natalie, her body, is getting weaker. The force of it, the heat, the … diet. It’s wringing her out, running her ragged. She sleeps through the day, but it’s the sleep of nightmares. She’s not going to make it much longer. And neither will I.”
Margaret could see it. Heather’s eyes were bloodshot. The lines on her face were bold and deep.
“I can’t lose them both,” Heather went on. “And especially not because of each other. Please, Ms. Willow. Margaret. I need your help. I’ll do anything, but please, it has to be as soon as possible.”
Margaret turned her attention from Heather to the bed. Natalie’s breathing was shallow, raspy. She might have had the strongest lungs in the world, but the nights were taking their toll. This thing inside her, Nathaniel or otherwise, was going to dry her out and walk the poor girl to her death. She might’ve had any number of parasites swimming through her digestive system for all the raw meat she’d consumed. Eleven years of life weren’t enough to withstand all this.
Between mother and daughter, everything they were going through, and the fragility of their lives together—what else was Margaret supposed to say?
She clasped her hands together. “I’ll be here before dark. But you have to do everything exactly as I say, no matter what.”
Heather agreed.
4
None of Margaret’s colleagues could appear on short notice. She had expected this. Of course, if she could gather more people last minute, she would’ve opted for the séance instead. Going solo was another reason not perform the exorcism yet, if you wanted to call it that. Margaret wouldn’t. An exorcism was an expulsion. What she planned to do was more about enticing the intruding presence so that it would manifest outside of the host.
That was what made it so dangerous not to know for certain that Nathaniel was in there.
Heather eyed Margaret’s leather bag, now swollen with ritual ingredients. “We’re not going to hurt her, are we? I don’t think I could hurt her.”
Margaret considered a lie, that yes, this would hurt her, and they should wait until Nathaniel’s presence could be confirmed. The time for that lie would’ve been this afternoon, before she surrendered to Heather’s pleas.
“Don’t worry about Natalie. We’re only here to help her. You should worry more about you and me. Natalie already has this thing inside her. When we draw it out, we expose ourselves to it.”
“It’s only Nate.”
“I hope you’re right. I really do.” Margaret crossed the den and led the way to the double doors of Nathaniel’s study. “Is she inside? Is she prepared?”
Heather followed close behind. “I did everything you said.” She stepped next to Margaret. “Did we have to wait for sunset?”
“It emerges on its own then. I’m hoping if it’s already at the surface, it’ll be easier to coax forward.” Easier on Natalie, at least. Herself and Heather Glasgow? She didn’t think anything would lighten their burden tonight. She turned to Heather. “You don’t have to be here for this.”
“I suppose not. This isn’t my world.” Heather pressed open the double doors. “But how could I leave her?”
Natalie lay balled up across the study from the doors, against the wall. Heather had followed Margaret’s instructions. She brought Natalie down here, and then laid some of her favorite things around her, some bits of jewelry, a patched-up horsey doll Natalie had probably kept since she was a toddler, and a couple of her most recent drawings. They were to remind her of herself. Hopefully Nathaniel would be more attracted to his own study than his daughter’s personal possessions.
Just as important, a glass of salt sat in front of these objects. It was to protect Natalie in case the entity was not her father and might mean to untether itself from her by violence if necessary.
“I only did as instructed,” Heather said. “Nothing more. I didn’t even restrain her.”
“You did perfect.” Margaret squeezed Heather’s shoulder. “Now let me do my part.”
First, there was another do
se of salt to add to the room. Margaret closed the double doors, set her bag down, and retrieved a jar filled with white crystals and powder. She shook a line of it along the doorway, and then walked around the center of the study. When she was done, a circle of salt lay between the doors and Natalie.
Heather set her teeth. “Is this witchcraft?”
“These are old practices. Some of them are old as the Roman rites of exorcism. Some, much older.” Margaret returned the jar to her bag and drew out five green candles. “You can call them witchcraft if that helps you. A doctor doesn’t worry where the methods came from. A doctor wants to heal a patient.” She stood the fives candles around the circle. “Could I borrow your matchbook, Mrs. Glasgow?”
Heather slipped it from the fold in her dress, where she once also kept cigarettes a lifetime ago, and handed the small white square to Margaret. “Heather. Please.”
Margaret lit the candles. “Thank you, Heather.” She returned the matchbook and then returned to her bag. She was nearly done. Next she drew out the largest item, a bundle of cuttings from a spruce tree. “Spruce wood makes smoke. A lot of smoke.” She wrestled with her explanation. Heather seemed a sharp woman, but how could you begin to explain to anyone the impermeability of the world? “We need to create what I’d call a vague space. Smoke obscures the senses. We lay that obfuscation between life and death. In smoke and fog, the spirit can roam.”
Heather licked her lips. “I don’t suppose I can smoke in here myself?”
“Nathaniel made you quit, didn’t he? If we present him something he dislikes, I’m not sure we’ll succeed.”
“It would sure help my nerves.”
Margaret used one of the candles to light the spruce ends. It didn’t take much to get them going, but she waved her hand over them and helped the smoke to billow. Soon it wafted across the circle and began to rise.
Last of all, Margaret retrieved a clay saucer from the bag and laid a handful of leafy herbs across the top. Then she laid the saucer in the center of the circle. “Belladonna. Better known as deadly nightshade. This is our key.”
“Should I get something of his?”
Margaret looked around. “We’re surrounded by his things. He should be comfortable here.” Peaceful and pliable, Margaret hoped.
“But maybe there’s something missing.”
“Only if we find out there’s something of his that he wants, that’s holding him to the world of the living. Otherwise, I don’t want to confuse him. If we make a mistake, pick the wrong object, it might remind him of his mortality.” Margaret coughed. She never got used to the smoke. “It could repel him. Make him angry, frighten him, send him back into Natalie, turn him from us. We want to draw him out and make him agreeable.”
“Finish his business and go.” Heather glanced around the room. “He died in his sleep. The autopsy said it was heart failure, what you’d call a natural consequence of living the kind of life he did. I don’t know what I could’ve done better.”
“You’ll get to ask him in a minute. The sun is almost set.”
Margaret already felt that tremble in her hands. Last night she could hardly hold her microphone. Now she was supposed to perform a ceremony, a rushed one. Everything had been such a tumult since then that she hadn’t had time to listen through her recordings. Tonight could be the same brand of mistake, of Natalie standing behind her on the stairway of the Glasgow house. Natalie, growling, hungry, strong. Here she would wake up and there would be no doors between them.
Natalie stirred. First she uncurled against the wall. Her back curved and her arms stretched in front of her. The yawn was almost a growl itself.
The smoke clouded Margaret’s vision and she had to wipe her spectacles. It was getting almost too thick for the spruce bundle to have made on its own. Nathaniel’s study lay mired in a gray cloud, broken only by the gentle light of the branches and the circle of candles. The spruce bundle stood on one end and burned from its top. The fire would take some time to reach the carpet. If the drawing of the spirit took that long, Margaret expected she and Heather would already be dead.
Natalie began to rise. Every movement was deliberate, a subtle stretch of the leg, a gentle rolling in the shoulders. She was in no hurry to stand. Her head turned slow from side to side. The smoke had confused whatever dwelled inside her. There was another growl, but softer now, curious.
“Aren’t you supposed to say something?” Heather whispered.
Margaret meant to say something, just that in the heat and intensity, she was having a hard time finding her tongue. It was in there, somewhere.
“Spirit,” she said, and then choked on her words. It had to be the smoke. And nerves. And fear. “Spirit, enter our sacred space. Let us speak with you and offer comfort.”
Natalie’s throat rumbled. She began to pace the far wall. The floor creaked beneath each pensive step. She couldn’t see Margaret too well, certainly couldn’t smell her, but could she tell the direction of Margaret’s voice? Margaret wondered if she should pace as well, but her legs threatened to quit on her at any moment. They were as shaky as her hands.
“Spirit, I know you’re here with us.” Margaret took a step toward Nathaniel’s desk. “Come forward in this place of life and death. Here, we are one.” She turned to Heather. “If there’s something you want to say to him, say it.”
Heather wiped at her eyes. “Nate? It’s me. It’s Heather. Do you recognize my voice?”
Natalie continued to pace. The smoke thickened, made her harder to see. Margaret could only make out the suggestion of an eleven-year-old girl on the other side of Nathaniel’s study.
“Nate, I’ve missed you.” Heather took a step deeper into the room, her foot at the edge of the salt circle. “We both have, Natalie and I. God, it’s been hard without you. Some mornings I wake up and forget you’re dead, like maybe you’re off on one of your hunting trips and you’ll be home next week. Then I remember and it’s like you’ve died all over again. Stupid, I know. It gets easier—no, not easier. But each time it happens hurts a little less than the last time.”
Margaret thought she saw movement beside Natalie, a leg much thicker than hers that kept in stride. When she paced back, nothing. Margaret wiped her spectacles for the twentieth time since morning. At next glance, there was no mistake. Something walked with Natalie in the smoke.
“But then you started this insanity with Natalie. Nate, she doesn’t deserve it. It’s destroying her life. Whatever I did wrong, don’t take it out on her. Please, tell me what to do to make it right.”
Natalie didn’t seem to notice her mother or the thing that walked with her. It moved as she moved, a puppeteer and its puppet. For these past weeks, it had been a formless spirit that dwelled in Natalie’s flesh, but here in the smoke, with the worlds obscured, it was a creature made manifest, not quite dead, not quite alive, not quite physical, not quite immaterial.
And every time Natalie moved one leg, it moved two. Not quite human, then.
“I’ll do anything. But let Natalie go. Let’s fix this, like we used to do. Happy family, strong family. Right?”
But it wasn’t a demon. It couldn’t be a demon, not when the holy water and the crucifix did nothing, so that meant it was something else, but it was not Nathaniel. An entirely different thing. Not Nathaniel.
“Heather, stop!” Margaret snapped.
The growl rattled through Natalie’s throat, same as it did last night, and coursed through the walls, across Nathaniel’s prizes, and within the sleek form that slid through the smoke, across the circle of salt.
Heather’s spine stiffened. “Nate?”
Margaret grasped her arm and pulled her close just as the presence lunged. One of the double doors shattered and the spirit in the smoke doubled back toward the salt circle. Margaret pulled Heather alongside Nathaniel’s desk. Another rumble ripped through the study.
Not a growl this time, but a roar.
When the form charged again, Margaret wasn’t fast enough. I
t knocked into the desk and Heather at once. She cried out and tumbled toward the wall across from the door. Margaret fell to one side, out of her way, almost into Natalie, who continued her pacing as if none of this was happening. Margaret turned back toward Nathaniel’s desk.
Now she saw it clearly, almost there. Almost alive. Dead, spirit, here it didn’t matter. In the smoke, all was one. She’d said so herself. Real, present, dangerous.
The shoulders and back stretched so taut that the hair on its back jutted up like spines. Four legs stood atop Nathaniel’s desk, their muscles tensed solid as bone. A tail swung behind the hind legs, long and coated in a bush of hair at the tip. Golden cat eyes stared through the fog, as if they could see clear as day, above a mouth cursed into a black frown. That frown parted and the flesh peeled away from curved, sharp teeth.
The lioness’s roar sent the study rumbling again, a quake hard enough to knock Nathaniel’s trophies off the walls. Margaret’s spectacles trembled off her face. In the ever-worsening haze, she only made out the form by the lioness’s golden fur. She was much larger than a lioness looked in photographs. The heat was immense, the oppression of a hot day stalking prey in the grasslands. Some prey animal, unsuspecting, hopeless. Trapped in her gaze.
She turned her cat’s eyes to Heather, prone on the floor, who didn’t make a sound. Then she stepped off the desk, her maw hanging open.
“No!” Margaret couldn’t see, could barely catch her breath, but she could still manage a shriek. “Get me! Here! I’m the one who got away!”
The lioness growled yet again. Her next step passed over Heather’s legs.
Margaret almost giggled. Her distraction had worked. And now what? She looked around for one of Nathaniel’s hunting rifles, but couldn’t see anything and hadn’t used one in ten years. And then, would it do any good?
She fumbled behind her for something, anything, an object to thrust at the lioness, and never took her eyes off that golden stare. The fiery spruce might have worked if she could find it. The shattered study door would help clear the smoke, but not fast enough. Her hand found a solid chunk of wood, heavy enough that she could fool herself into believing she might fight off four hundred pounds of muscled predator.
