by Chloe Garner
“Jenny,” Samantha yelled. “Jenny, we’re trying to help you. Keep your eyes open.”
The woman howled, tipping her head back, then renewing her frenzy to attack Samantha, despite the fact that her legs didn’t seem to be aware of anything but themselves. Jason finally got around her and hit her in the back of the head with his gun. The woman’s body went limp, and Samantha nearly fell forward trying to catch her before Jason got an arm around her ribs to hold her up.
“Get a chair,” he said. Samantha nodded.
Sam stood with the gun in his hand pointed absently at the floor, staring at the dirty mop of blond hair and the almost-gray tank top. Her arms were skinnier than he remembered, her hair dingier.
“She’s been like this forever,” he said.
“We have her now, and we’re going to fix it,” Jason said, shifting his grip on her to try to get the gun out of his hand and back into its holster. Samantha returned with the chair, casting a concerned glance at Sam. Jason handcuffed her to the chair then looked at Samantha.
“Is that enough to hold her?” he asked. She nodded.
“I’m worried about him, not her. They crossed a cheap demon for her side. He’ll be the powerful one. Ought to tie her ankles, just to keep her from hurting herself.”
“Has she eaten anything?” Sam asked. Samantha looked at him for a second as she dug through her bag for rope.
“Probably not. They shut down the parts of the body they aren’t interested in. Just enough to keep the body functional. Less to clean up.”
“I’ve never seen one like this before,” Jason said. Samantha didn’t look up from tying the woman’s ankles to the chair.
“This is what a class four looks like, in a human body. They actually have an easier time crossing on their own than by possession, because the amount of power is so trivial to do it, either way, and they at least know how to work their own body. Half the time, they forget they can’t fly.”
Jason cringed.
“Jump off things?” he asked. Samantha looked up at him and frowned.
“No, they fly.”
Sam, startled enough to look away from the woman, wondered what the world must have been like, going from perfectly normal to seeing things that even he couldn’t imagine. She looked over at him and smiled.
“No pity from you, okay? Not for me.”
She sat back on her heels and waited.
The woman came around fifteen minutes later or so and started to cry again.
“Help me,” she whimpered. “Please help me.”
“Jenny,” Samantha said, standing and holding the woman’s face in both hands. The woman nodded as she blubbered.
“Jenny, I need you to be strong. The demon is going to open her eyes again, and it’s going to be about the worst thing you’ve ever been through, but I need you to keep your eyes open. I know it’s going to be bad. But you have to do it, okay? Do you understand me?”
The woman took three racking sobs, then looked up at Samantha and nodded.
“Okay,” she said, her lips trembling, wet with tears and saliva. Samantha gave her a pitying look, then turned to Sam.
“Go now. Pull it out.”
He choked for a moment on the image of a cat in a bag, then began the incantation. Jason stepped forward and caught her shoulders as she started to thrash, her all-too-human eyes begging for mercy, but her mouth clamped shut. Then the scream came. Sam knew it would come. They always screamed, but before, he had thought it was the demon screaming. Now he knew it was just the body. He wished with everything in him that he could use light magic instead, but he continued. The scream became a stream of screeches and hisses, then a pure human scream again.
“Hold on, Jenny,” Samantha said, standing over the woman now, holding her face. The body thrashed, trying to bite, trying to escape, screaming. Sam continued his recitation. “You’re doing great. Keep your eyes open. Don’t give up your body to it. You belong in there, not her.”
Even after having done things like this for years, Sam lived in fear of the time that he wouldn’t remember the next line of the incantation. With the changes they had made, he had been so preoccupied with getting the new words right that he had run out of memorized lines. He began to panic as he got to the end of the line that he remembered, and Samantha stood, joining her voice with his - word for word, intonation for intonation - as he reached the end of the line, then continued. It was as if she was pulling the words from him. Words he didn’t remember came out of his mouth, exactly the way he had always said them, except there, where she had changed the language of that one. The demon thrashed and screamed, feet fighting the ropes, and Jason held her down harder, trying to keep her from beating her head against the back of the chair. Sam hit a new section of the incantation that he remembered again, and Samantha glanced at him, still speaking with him. He nodded, and she dropped out at the next breath, returning to her place over the woman, holding her head still.
“You’re almost there, Jenny,” Samantha said. “You’re doing great.”
The body rolled its eyes to whites at her and opened its mouth all the way to try to bite her. It screamed and hissed in her face, and still Samantha stood with her expression calm, stern. Sam reached the last line of the incantation, and the demon screamed once more, thrashing inside the body in an uncoordinated spasm, then she hung limp in the chair, barely breathing. Samantha put her fingers under the jaw, feeling for a pulse that Sam could actually see. Jason uncuffed her and went through the mechanical process of untying her feet.
“Let’s get her upstairs and get some water into her. That will feel good,” Samantha said.
She stood back and gave Sam room to pick her up. He looked down at her, then looked at Samantha.
“She was actually pretty, before.”
“She will be again. Water first, then food.”
He nodded and carried her down the long, dark hallway to the stairway and up into the light. It was almost blinding compared to the murk of the basement. He could hear Samantha and Jason behind him. Jenny shuddered and clutched against him.
“Is it over?” she asked in a tiny voice.
“Your part is,” he said. “You’re going to be okay.”
She nodded and sniffed hard.
“Greg… he isn’t Greg any more.”
“We know,” Sam told her, lifting her up higher so that her head could rest on his shoulder. She wrapped her arms around his neck and sighed, falling back asleep. It was like carrying a skeleton. He set her down on the couch and Samantha brought her a glass of water, waking her, then helping her to drink it. In the better light, Sam’s stomach turned to see the sunken cheeks, the sunken eyes.
“I’m going to take a look at you, to make sure you’re okay,” Samantha said, speaking to Jenny like she would to a child. “If you want me to send them away, you just tell me.”
Jenny rested her head back against the couch and nodded. Samantha lifted Jenny’s shirt to reveal a random pattern of bruises. Sam looked away. Jason was standing in the doorway watching the driveway.
“Ow,” Jenny said.
“How bad?” Samantha asked.
“I don’t know. Everything hurts,” Jenny said.
“How deep does it hurt? Right at the surface, right there? Radiating? Deep in your stomach?”
“My stomach hurts,” Jenny whimpered.
“Drink a little more,” Samantha said.
Samantha looked at Jenny for a few more minutes, then let her rest. Samantha was upset, but it hadn’t gotten worse over the course of the exam. There wasn’t anything more wrong with Jenny. Sam was relieved.
“We’ve got company,” Jason said.
“Take her upstairs,” Samantha said. “We’ll try to get him locked down, but there’s every chance you’ll have to get through the exorcism while we’re fighting with him.”
Sam wanted to tell her that he had done it while he was fighting demons, himself, but the look on her face combined with the stony determinati
on she had adopted when Jason had flagged the car coming up the driveway told him that that would be underestimating her again. He picked Jenny up and carried her upstairs, finding a bedroom that was decorated for a little girl and putting her down in the bed.
“What’s going on here?” he heard a voice downstairs say. Jenny stirred, upset, and he hushed her, closing the door behind him to run back downstairs.
“We need you to sit in the chair over there,” Jason said. Sam found him with his gun trained on the hotel owner. There was a moment as the man looked from Jason to Samantha to Sam, deciding his response, where he held his hands up and kept the posture of surprise that Sam thought that maybe they could get through the second half of the exorcisms without too much more violence, then the man dropped his arms and grinned.
“Who are you people?” he asked. “You’re in over your heads, here.”
“Sit,” Jason ordered again.
“You found Jenny,” he said. “She’s very sick. I wouldn’t believe anything she told you. I have her under medical supervision, but she doesn’t seem to be getting any better.”
Samantha edged around him, trying to push him forward, away from the door, and he looked at her, clucking his tongue.
“That won’t work. It’s very cute, but you aren’t going to be able to push me around. What have you done with Jenny?”
“Sit,” Jason said again, stiffening his posture. Sam drew his gun and came to stand next to Jason, just in case that was going to work. Greg turned his back to Jason and Sam and looked at Samantha.
“How long are we going to play this game? If you don’t tell me what it is you want, I’m just going to assume the worst, and that’s just going to be very messy.”
Samantha drew the iron rod from where she kept it on her left thigh and tipped her head down, looking at him like a bull. She licked her lips. He laughed.
“So that’s what this is? Charming.”
“Go, Sam,” she said as Greg charged her. She stepped aside as he reached her, bringing the iron rod down on the top of his shoulder with the sound of cracking bone. The demon roared at her and squared again. Jason glanced at Sam, who shrugged as he began his incantation. Who knew how to help her? Just make it look good, he guessed. Under the tight posture and the low center of gravity, she was chomping at the bit to match herself against the demon in the human body standing across the room from her. Jason tossed his gun up the stairs and went to stand on Samantha’s right side, away from the iron rod.
Greg’s eyes looked murderously at Sam, but he ran at Samantha again, getting another crack to the same shoulder, but driving her to the ground this time. She stabbed the rod into his chest to hold him off of her, not with enough force to puncture him, but he swung a fist at air and his face registered pain, all the same. Jason wrapped his arm under the demon’s chin and lifted, trying to push him into a position where he didn’t have any leverage, but Greg flipped him over his head, then rolled to the side. Jason landed on his back several feet beyond where Samantha lay, springing to his feet as he landed. Samantha rolled away from the demon to avoid having her chest stomped on, then also rolled onto her feet.
Sam pressed on.
Greg feinted an attack on Jason, then swerved around him and charged Sam where he stood on the third stair. Sam kicked him in the chest, confused for a moment at why he would make such an easy target of himself, like that. Samantha laughed, pouncing on him and putting the iron rod across his throat and pressing down on both sides.
“Our squishy isn’t so squishy,” she said. Greg grasped at the iron bar for a moment, then, as Jason tried to pin down his knees, got a good grip on Samantha’s elbow and threw her sideways, kneeing Jason in the chest.
“Okay, that’s just enough,” Samantha said standing. She joined her voice with Sam’s at the next breath, and the demon spasmed, falling to the floor and crawling for a second before he could get back to his feet. He kicked Jason away again and walked toward Samantha, walking as though he were going up a sand dune. She spread her arms and looked at him challengingly, pointing the iron rod at him as he got too close. He pushed his chest against it, reaching for her. She took a breath with Sam, then her words didn’t come with his. Sam felt the power of the magic he was spinning dim, and the demon stood up more strongly, grinning tauntingly at Samantha. She jerked her head back, dropping her arm, and he picked up his bulk to attack her undefended form. She spoke four words, like dropping smooth stones into water.
“Who?” he asked, his head twisting sideways, then he fell. She watched him slump to the ground, then heaved a huge sigh. Jason picked himself up onto his elbows and looked up at Sam. Sam shook his head. He had no idea what that was.
Jason stood and hauled Greg onto the couch. The man moaned. Samantha stood over him, watching quietly. His eyes flew open.
“Jenny,” he said.
“Alive,” Samantha said. “Sleeping upstairs. How do you feel?”
“Like a five-month bender,” he said. “With rot-gut.”
“What do you remember?” she asked.
“Pieces.” He tried to sit up, and she sat on the coffee table, pressing him back down.
“Water,” she said, looking up at Jason. Jason nodded and left.
“Are there any others?” she asked Greg.
“No, it was just the two of them. Jenny is okay? She looked so bad, last time,” he said, looking away.
“She’s okay. It’s going to be a long road to health, but she’s okay.”
He sighed and took the glass of water Jason offered him.
“Did he ever think or say his name?” Samantha asked.
“He called himself Legion,” Greg said. Samantha sighed.
“What does that mean?” Sam asked.
“It’s a demon joke. Like calling yourself Butch or Tank.”
“Is he going to come back?” Greg asked. Samantha shook her head.
“No. I gave him a strong warning that that would be a bad idea,” she said. Greg nodded and sat up.
“Can I see Jenny?” he asked.
“How do you feel, walking?” Samantha asked. He rotated his feet off of the couch, then winced about his right shoulder as he sat up.
“Yeah, I shattered that pretty good. Sorry about that,” she said. He nodded.
“I remember. You didn’t shoot me,” he said. She nodded and motioned to Jason to help him up. Jason helped him upstairs and Sam showed him where he had laid Jenny down. Greg touched her shoulder and she opened her eyes. And screamed.
And screamed.
Then looked around and realized that nothing bad was happening. Her eyes widened, and she wrapped her eyes around Greg’s chest. Sam and Jason left them alone, walking back downstairs.
“What happens now, for them?” Sam asked.
“I expect they’ll want to sell the house. Too many nightmares here for her. Then they just try to get well and figure out if they can still make it together,” Samantha told him.
“Why wouldn’t they?” Sam asked.
“He was her nightmare every day, for as long as she’s been down there.”
“Why would they do that, the demons?” Jason asked.
“Various reasons. Fear, pain. He had a victim who physically couldn’t run away. There’s sheer pleasure in just that, for them. There are other, worse reasons. I need to talk to them for a bit before we leave.”
“What did you say, at the end?” Sam asked. Jason looked at him and nodded.
“I banished him, and I tied a bell to him.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means if he ever crosses again, I’m going to know about it. He doesn’t know who I am, but he knows I can do it.” She looked at them. “It’s a fine line, but just then I really wanted to make sure that he didn’t come back to torture these poor people again. I put you more at risk.”
“Right call,” Jason said. Sam nodded.
“All right,” Samantha said. “I’m going to go up and talk to them for a minute. I’ll be back
?”
She was asking if they were willing to wait. Sam looked at Jason, then they both nodded.
<><><>
“So you’re taking me dancing tonight, huh?” Samantha asked as they piled back into the car.
“Looks like,” Jason said.
“I need a nap. Pick me up at ten?”
“You think they stay up that late around here?” Jason asked.
“Open until two, Friday night,” Sam said. “I asked yesterday.”
<><><>
“I’m sore like an old man,” Samantha heard Jason say as she finished brushing her hair. She hadn’t done much, but she felt great, looking in the mirror. It didn’t take much to not look like a vagrant, really. She was wearing a pair of black pants that laced up the sides and a slippy black shirt that moved with her in a way that pleased her, plus just enough makeup to prove that she owned it. She walked out of the bathroom and Sam and Jason turned to look.
“Dang,” Sam said. Jason grinned.
“You look good,” he said, then elbowed Sam. “Don’t wait up, man.”
Sam rolled his eyes, then stepped forward and kissed Samantha’s cheek.
“You look pretty,” he said. “Have a good time, tonight.”
“Only because you say so,” she said, then grinned. “Good night.”
They walked down the street to the bar, thumping music greeting them halfway there. Jason groaned.
“What?” Samantha asked.
“I had my heart set on country,” he said. She laughed.
The bar was packed and the dance floor even more so. Jason paid the cover charge and followed Samantha through the sea of sweaty bodies until she found a temporary open spot in the middle of the floor and turned to face him.
“I’m looking for a night off from being me,” she yelled in his ear.
“What does that mean?” he yelled back.
“Means you can’t tell Sam anything, and don’t expect me to ever act like this again,” she answered. He shrugged exaggeratedly and nodded. She grinned. Closed her eyes. Rolled her body against his as she lost consciousness in the music.
