by Ed
Father George returned that very evening with another priest, who identified himself as Father Gary.
Al met them at the door, shook their hands as he introduced himself and led them into the living room.
Everyone was there: Carmen and the three children, Laura, and the two remaining researchers, Chris and John.
As they stood just inside the living-room doorway, Father George introduced Father Gary to the family and said, "We would like to conduct a Mass this evening. If it's all right with all of you, of course."
No one objected. Michael reached over and turned off the television as everyone stood, some on mattresses, some on the floor.
"What would you like us to do?" Al asked.
"Well, if we could have a table?" Father George turned and looked at the coffee table that had been pushed against the wall and out of the way of the mattresses.
"Oh, no problem," Al said, and John helped him move the table onto the mattresses and in front of the two priests.
"Now," Father Gary said, sounding a bit shy, "if all of you could gather before us...if you don't mind standing on mattresses, that is."
"We're used to it, by now," Chris chuckled.
They all did as the priest had asked.
In a few moments, Father George and Father Gary began the Mass, delivering it in Latin.
During the Mass, something began to happen, something silent and very wrong—something that should not have been happening during a Mass.
Carmen and Laura were the first ones to notice it. They would not learn until later that they were the only ones to notice it. But they did see, simultaneously—the exact same thing.
The shadowy cloud moved into the room, flowing liquidly and silently. First, it oozed around Father George, then around Father Gary, until it held both of them in a diseased shadow.
Although they let on to no one else what they were seeing, Carmen and Laura each felt their heartbeats speed up, their breathing grow short and their throats become dry as they watched the undulating darkness surround the priests silently, mockingly, without the priests' reacting at all. It was as if the entity were simply making fun of their harmless little ritual.
In a little while, Laura began to feel something moving about her legs. She was wearing a pair of khaki hiking shorts and a white cotton blouse. She felt what seemed to be small hands on her bare legs, like the hands of a small child that wanted to be picked up. The tiny hands patted at her bare flesh, tugged at the hem of her shorts, their palms moist and cold, stubby fingers pleading with their movements.
...pick me up, please...carry me...hold me...please hold me close to you—close to your little tits so I can suck them, so I can suck the fuckers dry, you cunt, you horny little cunt with your pussy lips so wet and your hole open so wide for something to— Laura flinched at the words that screamed through her mind as hot as fire, and her eyes blinked several times and began to water. She tried to focus her attention on the Mass, tried hard, tried not to cry out, which was her first impulse.
The Mass continued without any interruption and seemingly without event.
But as Laura was experiencing the tiny hands on her legs and the voice in her head, Carmen felt what seemed to be stiff fingers poking her all over her body, invisible fingers that continued to prod and poke relentlessly, as if a child were walking around and around her, a spoiled, angry child, a brat that wanted something it couldn't have and was angry. But Carmen did not move. She focused her attention on the Mass and silently prayed for strength.
And as Laura was being touched and spoken to, as Carmen was being poked and prodded by an invisible finger, Chris began to feel something, too. It felt like a hand and it was groping in the area of his crotch. At first, it seemed to be on the outside of his pants, scraping the material around his zipper as if trying to find its way in. Then, as if it needn't have done that in the first place, it eased through the material of his pants, through his undershorts, and he felt thin, icy cold fingers wrap around his penis.
At first, those fingers took turns applying pressure and rubbing just a bit, like the fingers of a lover trying to turn him on, trying to prime him for lovemaking; but these fingers were too bony, too cold, like the fingers of a corpse...a long-dead corpse.
But the gentle movements soon gave way to harsh squeezing. The hand began to pull hard—too hard—until it became difficult for him to keep from crying out. But he managed somehow. He kept his attention on the Mass and prayed silently, asking God for strength, until it finally stopped.
For the next week, the Snedeker house was the center of what could only be described as an angry retaliation by the demonic forces that, until the Mass, had gone unchecked and had had free rein.
Late one night, while Chris was sitting up at the dining-room table, thumbing through a magazine and listening for any trouble that might arise, Laura's sleep was interrupted by what she, at first, thought to be a dream.
She was shaken violently as her nightshirt was pulled up until the hem was gathered around her neck. Frighteningly cold hands began to grope her breasts, to squeeze and knead roughly.
Sticklike fingers pinched her, playfully at first, then harder and harder until the pinching began to hurt, until it became terribly painful—until it became unbearable and Laura tried to scream, hoping the nightmare would end.
But she had no voice, and it did not end.
Instead, she felt something other than the hands, the fingers. She felt something solid brush over one breast, then the other, something as cold as steel, something with a razor-sharp edge.
She realized suddenly that it was a blade—the blade of a knife held by one of the hands that had been groping her a moment before.
The sharp edge brushed lightly up and down one of her erect nipples. And then, so smoothly that, for a moment, she did not even realize it, the knife began to cut...to slice back and forth...back and forth...
Laura could feel the blade enter her flesh, feel it move from side to side beneath her nipple, which she knew must be peeling away.
She opened her eyes, opened them wide, so wide that it hurt the muscles around them, but she could not see.
And then she realized that it was not a dream at all...and that she was blind.
She tried to scream...could not find her voice...then could only sigh...only whisper...only murmur...and then, with all the strength she possessed, she screamed at the top of her lungs, screamed her throat ragged, screamed until she had no breath left in her.
Then she gasped for air and screamed again, this time crying, "It's cutting me! I'm blind!"
Everyone around her awoke immediately—including Peter who awoke crying—and Chris ran stumblingly across the hall and into the living room.
Laura sat up, throwing aside her sheet and blanket and clutching at her breasts, screaming again and again, her eyes wide.
Chris flicked on the light and looked directly into Laura's eyes. It was obvious to him immediately that she was seeing nothing—that she was blind.
Then it ended as abruptly as it had begun.
Laura fell back on her pillow and relaxed, groaning as she rubbed her eyes a moment, then looked at all the concerned faces that hovered over her.
Chris knelt at her side after grabbing the tape recorder and John joined him.
"Tell us what happened," Chris said breathlessly.
She did, slowly and with a lot of stuttering and stammering.
When she was done, the two investigators looked at one another.
"They're attacking the eyes," Chris whispered.
"That means we'll have to act fast," John responded quietly. "They're angry...."
Late one night, while everyone else tried to sleep on the mattresses in the living room, Chris and John sat up at the dining-room table. Chris dozed, his head resting on his folded arms, while John browsed distractedly through that day's paper. He was scanning the comics when he first heard the sound: footsteps...coming slowly up the stairs.
John let the
paper fall to the table, reached over and shook Chris's arm. He didn't budge. He shook it harder and hissed, "Chris, wake up!" He stopped, suddenly realizing what was happening. He'd experienced it before. Sometimes, a demonic presence puts some of the people in a house into a deep trance while leaving others conscious to witness some sort of manifestation. John stood, got behind Chris and lifted his shoulders from the table; when he let go, Chris dropped back onto the table like dead weight.
"Oh God," John breathed as the footsteps continued to ascend, now joined by a new sound: a voice, murmuring and whispering, growing closer and closer as it came up the stairs slowly...
John's denim jacket was hanging on the back of the chair he'd been sitting in and he reached down, fumbled in its pocket until he found the small flashlight he kept with him.
Suddenly, the room—the whole house, it seemed—grew as cold as a meat locker, and John pulled the jacket from the chair, slipping it on as he left the dining room.
In the dark hall, he shone the thin beam of light toward the top of the staircase at the other end. He saw nothing yet, but could still hear the footsteps—and the voice, forming words now:
"Do...you...know? Do...you?"
John crossed the hall quickly, his chest tight with fear now, his free hand in the other pocket of his jacket holding the crucifix he kept there as he prayed silently.
He shone the light into the living room, sweeping it over the still forms on the floor.
"Anybody awake?" he asked, his voice cracking. Louder, he said: "Anybody hear me?"
"Do you know...what they did?" the voice asked, louder now, the words clear. It was neither male nor female and it gurgled wetly.
John smelled something unpleasant...something rotten.
When he spoke again, he saw his breath form a cloud before his face. "C'mon, wake up, somebody! Wake up!"
No one moved. No one even stirred.
"Oh God," John mumbled as he backed out of the living room, knowing that they weren't going to wake up, that they couldn't.
Once in the hall again, he turned slowly to his right, removing the crucifix from his pocket as the slow footsteps reached the top of the stairs. He turned the light down the hall and sucked in a ragged gasp that caught in his constricted throat.
The beam landed on bare flesh, mottled with white and purple; it was lose, flabby flesh that jiggled and swayed as the thing that stood at the top of the stairs with its back to John slowly began to turn.
For a long moment, John could not move, could only stare with his jaw slack and his eyes gaping and his arms and legs trembling.
It was a woman. She was stooped and pear shaped with tubelike breasts, nipples laced with stretch marks and spread thinly over the entire rounded end of each of the breasts, which dangled back and forth over her broad, jiggling belly as she hobbled forward slowly down the hall toward John. Her belly almost hung over the patch of mangy pubic hair between her fat, lumpy thighs. Her long hair—dark with gray streaks—hung in greasy, matted strings. Her fingernails and toenails were thick, black chunks that curled downward over her fingers and toes and her eyes rolled loosely in their sockets. The beam from John's flashlight moved jerkily over flesh spotted with large clots of bruiselike purple. She had no teeth and her lips pulled back over gums as she spoke:
"Do...you...you...know...what they did...to us down there? Do you knooowww?
He'd been holding his breath, but now began to breathe again and held up the cross, saying weakly, his breath puffing in the dark, "Hail Mary...full of grace...the Lord is with thee...blessed art thou amongst women ..."
What am I doing? he wondered silently. I've done this before, I know what Ym supposed to be doing!
"Do you knooowww...what they did...to our bodies?" the corpse rasped, coming closer and closer, the stench of rotting flesh growing more overwhelming as it neared. "Do you know the things they did to us?"
He stiffened his arm, holding the cross out farther as he shouted, "In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to leave this place and go back to the place from which you've come!"
"And do you know what else? it asked, ignoring his words as the loose, flabby lips spread into a broad grin, baring pink-and-purple gums and a waggling tongue. "Do you knooowww...what else? We loved it!" the corpse hissed, beginning to laugh, a wet, cackling laugh. "We loved the groping and the fucking and the sucking—"
"In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to leave this place—" "—and the tonguing and the fingering and the humping—"
"—and go back to the place from which you've come!"
"—do you hear me you godless, cocksucking asshole? We loooved it!"
And suddenly, the corpse stopped hobbling and began to rush down the hall impossibly quickly, but now, suddenly, as if John had blinked and missed the transformation, it was no longer a corpse.
It had sprouted wings, great leathery, batlike wings edged with tufts of gray fur, and the head was no longer that of a long-dead woman but was reptilian and pointed, with no lips, and with tiny glistening eyes. It thrust itself toward him rapidly as the body—now covered with scaled, wrinkled skin that hung in loose, jiggling folds and sporting an enormous, fat erection that tapered to a conelike point—swayed back and forth, running on its clawed, reptilian feet.
John screamed so loudly that he felt as if his eyes might pop from their sockets: "In the name of-of-of—"
But he was unable to get any further because the creature was on him and he felt its hot, sickening breath on his face as its powerful arms turned him around and threw him to the floor facedown, and then it was on top of him, its foul-smelling wings embracing him from behind like the arms of a lover.
John began to scream.
Then he lost consciousness....
When he awoke later—he had no idea how much later—he was still lying on the cold wood floor of the hall. He began to crawl toward the dining room immediately, trying to call out but unable to do little more than murmur. His flashlight was still on the floor, its narrow beam shining over the wood.
Chris darted out of the dining room. "John! What happened?"
It was a while before John could tell him.
A single night did not pass without eventually erupting into screams—sometimes one scream, sometimes more at the same time—at least once, but usually more often.
No one slept an entire night through, and the researchers hardly slept at all, a fact that was made obvious by their puffy, bloodshot eyes and their sometimes slurred speech and sluggish movements.
Ed and Lorraine came by almost every day and prayed with them. But they could tell that the demonic force in the house was gaining strength and that it wouldn't be long before they could do nothing to stop it. They made frequent calls to Father George to see how long the Snedekers would have to wait before the church took some action, and each time, Father George told them the same thing: "I'm doing the very best I can."
What he didn't tell them was that, since their visit to the Snedekers' house, both he and Father Gary had been the victims of a number of attacks similar to those going on in the house every day and night. But he really was doing his best to get the church's permission to conduct an exorcism in the Snedeker home.
In fact, everyone continued to do their best.
But the assaults continued, day after day, night after night...the voices and the smells...objects moving around by themselves...physical attacks...the stinging and prodding and touching...the sexual attacks...until everyone in the house began to think they were losing their minds.
And then, finally, help came.
27
Father Nolan
Permission for an exorcism was finally granted by the Catholic church and a priest experienced in performing the ancient ritual was chosen for the job.
Father Sean Nolan was a broad-shouldered, muscular man who stood six feet three inches tall. He maintained the exact same physical fitness regimen he had followed when he was in the Marine Corps.
When he w
as asked to perform the exorcism of the Snedekers' home, Father Nolan immediately began a week-long preparation— training, of sorts—that consisted of three days of constant, private prayer, followed by three more days of fasting and study. When he did eat, he stuck mostly to fruits and vegetables, and increased his exercise program.
He knew that his physical, mental, and, most important, his spiritual resources would be needed for the coming battle. Because that was exactly what it would be: a vicious, all-out battle. He'd been through several exorcisms before this one and was well aware of the danger to an exorcist during a confrontation with pure, naked evil.
He knew the risks he was taking—profane and humiliating assault and a hideous death—but he also knew that only the Lord could save him...if his mind was clear and his faith in God was strong. So he worked hard to prepare, using prayer the way an athlete might use exercise, using Bible study the way a boxer might use weights.
Because Father Nolan knew that, once the exorcism began, it could not be called off...no matter how much he might want it to stop.
Meanwhile, as the day of the exorcism drew nearer, Al and Carmen Snedeker began to grow concerned.
Very early one morning, just before dawn, after both of them had awakened and were unable to go to sleep, they sat at the dining-room table facing one another over tea.
The children and Laura were still asleep, as was John. Chris was in the bathroom taking a shower.
"Do you really think it's gonna do any good?" Al whispered groggily.
"Well...guess we don't have much choice, do we?"
"Yeah, but what about the other things? The blessings. The Mass. They just seemed to make it angrier. What's an exorcism gonna do?"
"If it gets worse, I guess we could always move."
"With what? How? We can't afford to move!" he hissed. "We're barely gettin' by now, Carmen. We're still suffering from all those medical bills. If our insurance had been better, yeah, sure, we could probably move now. But our insurance stinks. We're still paying off most of those damned bills."
"Please, Al, don't talk that way. It had to be done. Poor Stephen was...he didn't get cancer on purpose, you know."
