by Wood, Rick
“Any brothers or sisters?”
“Yes, an older brother and an older sister. But they are with Julie’s parents. Once Larissa attacked our boy, she left a mark, so we decided it was best.”
Derek nodded and took a sip of his tea. Eddie watched to see if Derek reacted with the same repulsion for the poor excuse of a beverage Eddie had. He managed to hide it quite well, but after his sip he did place it upon the table with a clear decision not to touch it again.
“May we see Larissa?”
“Of course.” The father rose from his seat.
“Alone?”
Dawson froze in mid-rise, glanced back at Julie, then turned to Derek and reluctantly nodded. Derek smiled a warm, reassuring smile. He glanced at Eddie and led him upstairs.
As Eddie had envisaged, the girl was in the second door to the right at the top of the stairs. As the floorboards creaked beneath Eddie and he felt loose nails bump into the soles of his feet, he noticed the hallway growing colder. Eddie could see his breath in front of him. The brown, tasteless wallpaper was peeling off the haggard walls. It gave him sickening butterflies in his stomach.
As they entered the bedroom, the entity that dwelled within Larissa’s body lifted its head with a sadistic smirk. It cackled at the sight of Derek.
It croaked a trail of drawn-out, cracked laughter in a deep, snarling voice, wriggling and writhing all over the bed it was strapped to. “They sent an exorcist.”
It continued laughing; that is, until Eddie entered the room. Then it fell silent. Completely still. Its eyes glazed over into wide-eyed terror, its jaw sinking and terror overcoming its face.
“It’s you…” it marvelled.
Eddie glanced at Derek. He wasn’t expecting this. Derek looked unnerved also.
“You have returned…”
“Returned?” Eddie refuted. “I was never here.”
In an abrupt movement, the girl’s body flung into the air and scarpered past Eddie and Derek, thudding down the stairs. They turned and sprinted after her with severe urgency, practically skidding off the bottom step and accelerating toward the garden, following the girl’s shadow.
They found the glass door to the garden smashed and a red trail of footprints leading across the paving slabs, the damp blood glistening in the moonlight.
As they slowed down and edged outside with weariness, Eddie heard a rustling coming from across the garden.
The shed.
With one cautious foot in front of the other he edged forward, peeling open the shed door and peering in.
The girl’s body shot a nail gun through one of her hands and into the wall, creating its own stigmata. A nail flew from the nail gun to her other hand and she was pinned up.
Eddie knew what this was. Her hands pinned up like she was on a cross. It was mocking the words he had used against her.
“Stop!” Eddie cried out, aware of the pain this must be causing the girl hidden inside.
The greyed face turned to demonic dread.
“You have finally come.”
The terror on the face of the demon turned to glee. It grinned, its body practically dancing.
“You have come. And now you can command us.”
Eddie stared. He glanced at Derek, who continued looking stumped. He had no idea what the demon was talking about.
“Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light”
(2 Corinthians 11:14)
2
20 July 2001
One year, seven months after millennium night
A big sigh fell out of Jason’s mouth. Thirty years was a long time to have been doing this, but he had become very, very good at it; almost too good to stop. He didn’t feel quite as observant and energetic about it as he once had, but he was keen none-the-less. He was keen to make sure people knew the truth, that people were not manipulated.
“I’m getting a C,” claimed ‘Psychic Phil,’ the wondrous, magnificent con artist. “I’m getting a C from over here, is there anyone who is linked with a C…”
He waved his hand in a swirling motion over the opposite side of the stalls to which Jason was sitting. It was amazing to him that people still needed to be told that this was a load of crap. Surely they don’t think some knobhead shouting out “I’m getting a C!” over a crowd of around three-hundred gullible idiots was evidence for some psychic phenomenon. If anything, it was evidence for how much people will believe something when they are desperate to believe it.
A middle-aged man wearily rose his hand, glancing nervously around.
“Ah!” exclaimed Psychic Phil. “Stand up, my friend.”
The man rose, his hands fidgeting, timidly glancing around at the sea of faces staring back at him.
“But your name is not what the C is about, your name is… what is your name, my friend?”
“Paul.”
“Paul!” he repeated with a grand gesture of his arms, flinging them out to convey wonder to his audience. “And I am getting a very strong C, possibly a cat something, car, cur, maybe cro –”
“Calippo?”
“That is it! Tell me, what is calippo to you?”
“It was my grandfather’s favourite ice cream.”
“Ah, I see! And your grandfather is not with us any more, is that true?”
“No, he is not.”
Paul looked around with amazement that this man was able to pick up on such extraordinary facts about his life. Calippo was his dead grandparents favourite ice cream? Hold the phone! thought Jason.
He sat back and rubbed his hand over his forehead. This guy wasn’t even making an effort. Over his years, he had found psychics with ear-pieces, psychics who had done thorough research on their audiences, psychics who had risen into the air and added some theatricality to their stupidity. Not this guy. This guy was just reliant on cold reading – and really, really bad cold reading at that.
“And your grandfather, yes, he’s coming through to me now Paul, he’s coming through…” Psychic Phil put his fingers on his temples and bowed his head, closing his eyes, showing immense concentration. “Yes, Paul, he’s telling me – ‘don’t worry about the mess.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
“Yes!” Paul gasped, putting his hand on his chest to show his shock. “Yes, my grandfather left the family in quite a mess.”
“Excellent, Paul, excellent, you’re doing great; but wait! I have something else coming through! He says, ‘it’s time to let me go, Paul.’ Do you know what that might mean?”
Jason scoffed, more loudly than he’d intended. “It’s time to let me go… don’t worry about the mess.” How desperate was this Paul guy to want to believe that this was actually some kind of bullshit message coming through from his late grandparent? As if someone from the beyond would ever say “It’s not time to let me go.”
Jason went a little red. He felt embarrassed for Paul. He was obviously craving closure with his dead relative; so much that he was forcing himself to believe all that was being said.
Enough was enough. It was time for Jason to show this fraud for what he was.
“Right, I’m getting an M from over here,” Psychic Phil started circling his hand over the area of the audience Jason was sat in. Without hesitating, Jason lifted his hand in the air.
“Thank you, my child, please stand.”
Jason obliged, smiling sarcastically, and placing his hands in his pockets.
“I’m getting a Ma, maybe a Margaret, or a Marissa?”
“Miranda,” Jason stated bluntly.
“What?”
“My dead wife. Her name was Miranda.”
Psychic Phil performed a moment of confusion, scrunching up his face for only a moment, before he continued his act.
“Right, yes, Miranda – And she died of some sort of illness, am I right?”
“Yes, cancer.”
Some of the audience around him gasped with sorrow, looking at him with extreme sympathy.
“Yes, she’s coming through to me now
, she has something to say…”
“And what is that?”
“I’m getting red, the colour red… does that mean anything?”
“Her blood was red.”
“Her blood was red? Right, well it may be something else, we’ll see… Yes, and now she’s saying… Yes, she’s saying… ‘Please don’t cry for me.’ Do you know what that might mean?”
“Yes. When she died, I cried.”
“Oh my!” Psychic Phil stood back, aghast. “Thank you, you may sit.”
“Just before I do, Mr Phil, Psychic, whatever –” Jason raised his hand to halt Psychic Phil, who froze, his eyes shifting nervously. This wasn’t in the script. “I have something to say about my dear wife.”
“Oh yes?”
“She isn’t real. I made her up.”
The theatre fell into complete and utter silence. People looked back and forth from Jason to Psychic Phil, like an intense tennis match. The tension grew hostile.
“Why, whatever do you mean?” Psychic Phil turned wide-eyed, attempting to save his show.
“You just gave me a reading for a dead woman who never lived or died. You just told me what she said, and she never existed.”
Psychic Phil looked over his shoulder, evidently at someone backstage, with an expression that read ‘what do I do?’
“So you lied?” Psychic Phil shook his head, disappointed. “Oh how dare you.”
“How dare I lie?” Jason raised his voice in anger but smiled, enjoying the moment. “You have just lied to every person in here. You have just told me you heard my dead wife talking to me through you, and that was a lie. You told me you were picking up on her, and that was a lie. And you dare to call me the liar?”
Psychic Phil backed away toward the wings. Boos rang out through the theatre, heckles and jeers furiously directed at the stage.
“You have committed fraud today, and these people deserve their money back.”
The crowd echoed Jason’s words, repeatedly chanting: “We want our money back!” Oh, how tables can turn; one minute they were lapping it up, then a simple explanation from a man who had been doing this for years turned them all against Psychic Phil.
Jason made his way through the row of seats between him and the aisle, bearing a grin, enjoying the sound of an audience defiant to the psychic, who had since scampered off-stage and dumped his microphone.
Pleased with his day’s work, he put his coat on and left the theatre. The sun was still shining in the cool summer sky and he enjoyed a nice, quiet walk home.
3
28 September 2001
One year, nine months after millennium night
Kelly’s train pulled up late morning and she loaded herself up like a pack mule. A suitcase in her right she could wheel along, a suitcase in her other hand she could carry, a stuffed sports bag over her back and her carry-on bag on her shoulder. No one gave any sympathy to her struggles off the train; they simply barged past her, knocking her off her precariously balanced shuffle again and again.
No, Dad, I don’t need a lift… I’d rather do it myself… I’ve taken the train before, I’ll be fine…
She felt a right plonker. Just because she didn’t want her parents to embarrass her in front of her new flat mates, she had subjected herself to clumsy shambles along the train station platform, loaded with bags she could easily drop at any moment. She felt like a human Jenga; if one piece went, so would all the rest.
She made it to the bus outside the station, spotting all the people who had barged off the train past her, who were now leering at her out the window of the bus she’d just missed. What a bunch of dicks! That’s people for you, just a bunch of selfish voyeurs. See a young lady struggling, do you help? No! You stare gormlessly.
She fumbled for her purse in her carry-on bag, using the spare fingers of her hand that already clutched her suitcase. With great difficulty, and a few impatient huffs from the waiting bus driver, she withdrew the money, paid him, and dumped herself down on a seat. Laying all her items on the seat beside her she leant her head back, closed her eyes, and sighed. That may have been a short walk loaded up with all her belongings, but it had already knackered her out.
Glancing at herself in the reflection of the window, she wiped her face with her hands, catching a whiff of her perspiration caused by her bag-carrying ordeal. She did not want to have to meet everyone with her hair and forehead dripping with sweat and big pit stains beneath her armpits. She lifted her arms up and took a subtle observation, noticing a slightly wet circle underneath each arm.
She threw her head back and closed her eyes again, forcing herself to chuckle at the situation. She had to. The alternative was to cry. And she did not want to turn up with wet eyes as well as wet pits.
She was a genuinely pretty woman, only nineteen, still young enough to have her cute baby face. She wasn’t someone who needed makeup and hair extensions, which was good, as she despised having to apply such things. She had freckles over her nose and long, auburn hair that glided off her shoulders like wind off a mountain. She had an impressive physique, especially since she had started running that summer. She’d had to; if she had spent another minute growing restless, indoors watching television with her parents, she would have lost it.
She gazed out at the town she was moving into as it floated by through the window of the bus. There was a large park where a group of boys were playing Frisbee.
She had heard about the university’s Ultimate Frisbee society; it had been described on the student union page of their website as ‘legendary.’ Kelly had always found describing something as legendary a little farfetched. She had loved stories of King Arthur, Knights of the Round Table, and Greek gods as a child, so much so her dad had bought her an encyclopaedia of the Greek gods for her ninth birthday. All these people performing heroic acts, such as pulling a sword out of a stone, or rescuing a woman they loved; they were legendary. Someone throwing a Frisbee back and forth? Not sure that could match slaying a dragon.
She admired the town as the bus drove through it and paused to pick up a few more people. Among them were a group of people who looked her age, with baggy jeans and shoulder bags, sporting the typical student look. She smiled. After a year out, she had been desperate to finally get started in her psychology degree.
It occurred to her she was going to need an explanation as to what she did on her gap year. What do most people do? Build a school in some war-torn country? Go travelling to find yourself? Get a job?
She didn’t know what to go with, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to tell the truth. She could imagine how that conversation would go.
“Hi, I’m Kelly. So what did you do on your year out?”
“Ah, well I worked at a café for a few months, then travelled along Europe before settling in the Middle East, where I helped a small village in a war-torn country rebuild their homes. It was amazing. What about you?”
“That’s lovely. Yeah, so I was sectioned, spent ten months in a mental health facility, got numbed on medication until I couldn’t function, and finally got released when I had managed to regain a sense of what is real and what is not. I currently take three pills a day as part of a post-sectioning treatment program. These scars on my arm? Yeah, I was sectioned after I tried to kill myself. It was amazing. So, you fancy going for a drink?”
Yes, that was not a conversation she wished to have. She would need to think of something. She didn’t want people to automatically assume she was crazy. Maybe once she got to know people, she could be honest. Until then, it was probably best not to.
The bus pulled up outside the halls of residence. She reloaded herself with all her bags and hobbled off the bus into the car park. She had barely hobbled a few steps before until a man in a purple t-shirt rushed over to her.
“Hi, how you doing?” he smiled. He was a good-looking guy, with his hair slicked to the side and his teeth perfectly whitened. “Let me give you a hand with that.”
He took her shoulder b
ag and the suitcase from her hand and tucked it under his arm, casually walking alongside her as she stared at him with a lustful awe. She noticed that there were a lot of other people wearing purple helping carry bags. The place was alive with an infectious buzz, rammed with people unloading cars and taking their belongings into their new dorms. Cars were queueing to get into the car park and people dressed in purple were trying to organize their parking.
“I’m Doug,” he smiled at Kelly sweetly, making her knees go slightly weak. “I’m in my second year, studying English Literature. What’s your name?”
“Kelly,” she answered, half-giggling, half-staring, making her name come out in an embarrassing snort.
“Hi, Kelly, which halls are you in?”
“Er… Newton.”
“Awesome. This way.”
He led her into a courtyard in the middle of a square of buildings. Each one had the name of a famous genius on it. She spotted Darwin and Einstein next to her new halls, Newton.
“Well, I’ll leave you here, Kelly,” Doug announced, placing her bags outside of the door leading to Newton. “Don’t forget to collect your keys first.”
She attempted to smile and ended up giggling like a loon. Two minutes there and she was already awkwardly bumbling over a good-looking guy.
She heeded Doug’s instructions and collected her keys from the office at the front of the court yard. They had a label reading ‘13 Newton.’
“Thirteen/. Unlucky for some…” she muttered to herself.
She lugged her bags up the stairs to the second floor and found her way to number thirteen. She let herself in and dumped everything down on the bed, propping the door open behind her. It was a small room, but it would do the job. A big welcome box sat on the bed, a desk was propped against the wall about a metre away from her new place of sleep, and the metal bars coming off the head of the bed gave her a flashback to her time in the facility.
