“Sharon! Where are you going!” Greg demanded as his wife hurried out the door. He was stunned she could leave at a time like this.
“It’s Brittney!”
*****
Sharon left the exorcism with one thing on her mind—her newborn baby. She wrestled with feelings of confusion and fear, but most of all acute powerlessness. Her first born was going through the unthinkable. Possession. It sent a profound and calamitous upsurge of terror through her bones because she couldn’t do a thing about it. However, if she couldn’t help her poor Melissa, at least she could help baby Brittney.
The first thing she noticed in the nursery was the eerie stillness. Her baby just lay there in her bassinet. Little Brittney. So serene and sweet. Sleeping soundly and quietly.
Where did the crying come from? Am I losing my mind?
To be certain, Sharon checked the bassinet more closely. She didn’t dare touch the little one or even make a sound. Didn’t want to wake her little angel. Had Brittney simply cried herself to sleep?
Encountering no signs of wakefulness in her child, she decided the best thing was to simply let her sleep, and, after a gentle kiss on the forehead and a soft prayer of protection, that’s what she did.
She departed the nursery walking backward, scanning for clues of any foul play. The diaper changing table. The playpen and overflowing toy box. The rocking horse and the shelf of plush bears and the plastic bins overflowing with Duplo blocks and Muppet dolls. Nothing was disturbed. Nothing out of place.
She sighed in relief and felt confident enough to leave her precious one alone. Safe and sound, while the terrible distress regarding her oldest daughter once again weighed heavy on her heart. She hated leaving little Brittney. But a sense of duty propelled her back to where she’d just been. Back to Melissa’s side.
Then the unexpected—a baby’s shrill and colicky cry, so painful and wretched Sharon had no choice but sprint back to the nursery.
When she opened the door, she was supremely surprised to find Brittney fast asleep again. Not a sign in the world she’d been awake. The crying had stopped the second she placed her hand on the doorknob. The baby slept soundly and softly in her bassinet. Sharon sensed a stitch of unfamiliarity, as if it wasn’t her baby that had made those disturbing noises.
A chill made the hairs on the back of her neck stand straight. She no longer cared to leave her baby all alone. Not while there was an evil entity in the house. Who knew what other kinds of sinister spirits were lingering, ready to snatch her children?
As he lifted her baby gently from the bassinet, the very thing she imagined came true. Straight from her hands her child flew. It felt like someone or something wrapped its unseen fingers around Brittney’s little body and simply plucked her away. Naturally Sharon screamed when it happened, and screamed again as she watched Brittney floating in midair, rocking this way and that gently, on a gradual and meandering ascent toward the ceiling.
Brittney, for her part, seemed quite unfazed. Awakened at this point, presumably by her mother’s shrill shrieks, she wasn’t scared or disturbed in any way. Quite the contrary. She was calm and content and even took quite a bit of pleasure in the ride. She laughed and giggled and produced a series of garbled chirps. Baby talk. After all, the person helping her fly through the air with the greatest of ease was a baby too. Small and wonderfully lumpy and so friendly. Brittney asked the spirit its name, and got a response via another series of squeaks and squawks. More baby talk.
The answer was Ruby.
The room came alive with supernatural energy. Everything that ran on either AC or DC turned on independently. Tommy the Train and JJ the Plane and talking teddy bears all buzzing and chattering and rolling across the floor, bumping into each other, turning and heading in different directions. The plastic record player awakened and belted out Sesame Street, Bert, Ernie, and Elmo all singing about the letter Q. The dancing scarecrow. The stuffed pigs and dolphins and toy monkeys and barking dogs and mooing cows. A tiny TV came alive under its own power, showing Brittney’s favorite Backyardigans episode.
Sharon was stunned by what she perceived. Brittney was smiling. Not only that, she had on her face the same look she’d had the time she met Mickey and Minnie. Total and absolute bliss. A smile as wide as the Grand Canyon, complete with her own little Colorado River of drool. It didn’t seem to matter that she was levitating eight feet in the air. Brittney knew something her mother didn’t know. She knew Ruby wouldn’t hurt one of those fine little hairs on her head. Ruby was a baby too. Or at least she was when she had died.
“Brittney!” Sharon shouted instinctively. “Come down from there!”
When Brittney refused to come down, and she did refuse (Ruby gave her the choice and Brittney told her firmly she wanted to keep playing), Sharon went ballistic, yelling and throwing a fit. The commotion reigned supreme throughout the house, and the one prevailing word that dominated over the rest was the one word she wanted everyone to hear:
“GREGORY!”
*****
Melissa thrashed about in supernatural agony. She tossed her head violently, screaming in Hrvatski, a language she never could have known. Reacting to a terrified cry from the other side of the house, Father Thomas halted his ritual and stared at Greg.
“Is that your wife?”
Greg, flooded with nervous tension, acted on impulse and dashed to his wife’s rescue. He was torn, of course. His daughter, his sweet and wonderful Melissa had a demon coursing through her veins. However, his wife’s anguished cries sent him over the edge.
“Bobby, watch your sister,” he raced out the door. Father Thomas and Monty both went with him, sprinkling holy water and reciting revered phrases and pledging to return.
“No problem,” the scheming kid grinned. As soon as the others left the room, he started shooting video from the best angles he could. What he captured stunned his fifteen-year-old brain.
The features on his sister’s face had altered to the point of becoming a totally different person. Not ugly by any means, only different. He wanted to scream, but the beauty of this ethereal being shocked him into silence. And though the loveliness was beyond the comprehension of such an immature, selfish little mind like Bobby Hardgrove’s, the one prevailing emotion he felt was fear. Terror, in fact. It started as a tightening in his sphincter, then spread up his vertebrae. But he controlled it. In fact, he laughed at it. Laughed in the face of his own fear, and in the face of this stranger who was holding his sister hostage.
“You’re gonna be cast out of my sister’s body,” he watched the thing’s reaction through his recorder’s screen. “Whatever you are…What are you, anyway? A demon?”
“I am not a demon!” the spirit inside Melissa was terrified. She didn’t know where she was or this strange boy with the odd contraption. “I just want to find my husband!”
“Satan, right?” laughed Bobby. “You’re married to Satan? Oh, this is so good.”
“Stop teasing me! Don’t you know he’s in trouble?”
“Awesome!” Bobby’s agenda was clear. “My YouTube channel’s gonna blow up!”
Just when Bobby’s dreams of internet stardom were at their slimy zenith, several alarming events burst his bubble. First, the temperature dipped to where he could see his own breath. During several moments in the exorcism he felt chilling winds and temperature fluctuations. This one, though, was different; it had an accompanying cloud formation that sent rivers of ice through his bloodstream. Nearly vertical, the cloud kept feeding on itself, rolling and curling in a strangely familiar shape. A man. One of distinction and style. A smooth strong jaw and impeccably pomaded hair, fashioned in a timeless way. Green eyes offset a black suit jacket, stunning silk shirt, and manly but gorgeous slacks. Even Bobby, steeped in teenage naivety, appreciated the obvious sense of style and taste. This was why he found it difficult to harbor any sort of fear. More than anything, he felt a sense of wonder, even admiration.
“Who are you?”
&nb
sp; “I’m a ghost, Bobby,” Rev widened his emerald green hypnotic glare, waving a semitransparent hand. He also produced a filtered aurora around his whole frame, for added effect. “Scared?”
“Uh, no,” the pimply teen stepped back, resuming his photojournalist’s stance, camera high, red tally light on to show he was recording. “Why should I be afraid of you?”
“Fair enough,” Rev had a certain smirk. Using his thumb, he pointed over his shoulder. “But I bet you’re afraid of him!”
As he uttered that last word, the atmosphere behind Rev became a violent storm, as if a tornado had formed inside Melissa’s bedroom. The grayest, nastiest, murkiest storm ever witnessed by human eyes. Spanning from floor to ceiling, blocking out all light, transforming what was already a tense and bizarre scene of spiritual possession into an all-out chaotic chapter straight from The Book of Revelations. Bobby’s respiratory system failed him, but he somehow found the temerity to hold the recorder steadily on the unholy apparition in front of him.
A giant plume of soot and ash and sizzling coals. Fire and smoke and boiling anger. Bobby knew in his heart it was a monster. Seething eyes with no trace of mercy. And a hungry smile, drenched with malice in an unending pyroclastic flow from the pits of Hell.
That was all for Bobby Hardgrove. The boy staggered, stammered, and finally fainted in a heap. Rev applauded his cohort’s good work, hostile and demonic as it was.
“Excellent, Brutus. Couldn’t have done it better myself.”
“Stop messing around!” Abby, clad in soiled pajamas, crawled in through the window. She’d been staged outside for an hour, and now was her moment. She had on the exact same putrid clothing as Melissa. Vomit-stained purple PJs with a floral print. Her hair was done the same. Even her facial features were made to look similar, with prosthetic additions to her nose and eyebrow ridge. All in all, her makeup and wardrobe gave her the stunning effect of perfect mimicry. As usual, Abby was the master of disguise.
All they had to do was make the switch with Melissa. Brutus went to work untying the teenager from the bedframe, loosening the ropes on her wrists and ankles. In her possessed state, she tried getting up and running, but Brutus subdued her, muffling her screams with a ghostly hand over her mouth.
At the same time, Rev went to work on erasing any evidence by locating the memory card inside Bobby’s video recorder. With a wave of his hand, he supercharged the magnetic field in the immediate radius, scrambling the digital data.
Abby rushed to the bed, eager to get into place for Phase Two. It was imperative the family be convinced the exorcism was a success. Abby’s job was to make sure that happened.
“You sure you can do this?” Rev materialized in rapid fashion next to the bed.
“Of course,” Abby said. “Pretending to be possessed is easy, especially with Morris’s help.”
“No,” Rev smiled. “I mean impersonating a seventeen-year-old girl. Don’t you think it’s a little bit of a…stretch?”
“Just tie me up,” she sneered, hoping he was being the same old playful Rev and not being malicious.
“Where have I heard that one before?” he raised an eyebrow.
“Hurry, they’ll be coming back any time now. Ruby can’t hold them forever.”
“Relax. We’ve got this, Abby,” Rev had a good time tying her wrists nice and snugly. She gasped at the firmness at first when he cinched them, but sighed in passionate release when they met eyes. Another time, another place. Not now. Not here. They had a job to do. But at that moment they paused and stared, unable to break from the allure of each other’s gaze.
“Guys,” Brutus issued a flinty warning. They both cleared their throats. Rev stood and dissolved into miniscule particles. Just like that, he was standing in the doorway next to Brutus, who still had solid custody of the fair young Melissa Hardgrove. Rev became all business, and so did Abby, preparing for the most crucial stage of the mission. The culmination of days of planning and rehearsals. Time for the professionals to do their jobs. But they burned for each other, and, out the door behind Brutus, Rev seized his chance for one last glance at her, and she at him.
“Be careful,” he commanded.
“You too.”
Chapter 5
“Sharon! What’s wrong! Sharon!” Greg Hardgrove was frantic because his wife was frantic, though he had no clue why exactly. When he’d first gotten there, he found a terribly disquieting thing—the door was locked and his wife was behind it, screaming bloody murder as an eerily festive sound echoed throughout the room. Greg banged and banged. The priest offered a prayer. The door wouldn’t budge, and the screaming and strangely cheerful noises wouldn’t stop.
Then, abruptly, all fell silent. The door swung open. Greg rushed inside to find nothing amiss or disturbed in any way. It had sounded from the outside as if a dozen children were in there, playing with the trains, planes, dolls, and music boxes. However, all he saw was a neatly organized playpen, toys put away, sheets folded and everything still and lifeless. The only thing moving in the room, the only thing making any sort of noise, was Sharon, his wife and mother of his children. She knelt on the floor in an awkward way, cradling a blanketed bundle in her arms and rocking back and forth, sobbing.
“Oh, my baby. My sweet, sweet baby!”
Greg made a beeline to his wife and child. The priest’s prayers grew louder. They all thought the worst, that a demon had now possessed the youngest in the household. But Sharon’s cries weren’t out of agony or grief. They were out of joy, and Greg realized that when he laid eyes on Brittney. Little Brittney. Only a year and a half old. Too young to be caught up in this horror. Yet when he looked in her eyes he saw nothing but contentment. Sharon smiled nervously when she explained to him and Father Thomas what had happened. Greg, believing his wife, wanted answers.
“What would a spirit do that for, Father? Why do all this?”
The priest whispered into his assistant’s ear. Monty thought a moment and whispered in return. When a consensus was reached, Father Thomas announced their theory.
“It was a diversion. Meant to keep us from doing our real job, which is the exorcism of your daughter, Melissa.”
*****
When they returned to Melissa, Greg, Father Thomas, and Monty were in such a hurry they didn’t notice Bobby had gone missing. They didn’t know Brutus had dragged him into the closet to hide him from view. Out of sight out of mind he was, and after the initial rush to make sure Melissa wasn’t harmed, the exorcism then proceeded in earnest.
“I cast you out, unclean and unwanted spirit! Go! The Heavenly Father and Christ order you to leave this innocent child immediately!”
“NO!” Melissa’s possessor shrieked. “Stop tormenting me!”
“Be gone with you!” the priest shook the vial of holy water fiercely. Melissa’s possessed body curled upward in violent spasms of pain. Sharon sobbed, shielding baby Brittney in her arms. Greg, protecting Sharon and the baby, shuddered with simmering remorse. Father Thomas stood firm. Assertively. Expertly. He was determined to defeat this parasitic spirit. Determined to send it to the great beyond.
“Be gone! Be gone Satan and all of his sycophants! The word of God and the power of his Son, Christ the Lord, command you…be GONE!”
The possessed girl roiled and rolled as the bed bounced violently. The wind howled like the dogs of hell. Windows rattled, bedposts shook, and a small tremor rocked the foundations. Of course all of this was artificial. Hydraulics and pneumatics and hidden fans, remotely controlled by Morris, provided the special effects. Abby provided the theatrics.
“No! No! Leave me alone! Leave me be, you-you heartless bastard!”
Abby hated being so harsh to a man of the cloth, but the part called for it. Besides, it would end well for the guy. She’d make sure of it. She’d let him think he won. And she’d make it look good. But not until after she stalled a little longer. She had to stall. In her head, she heard Rev still trying to coax the spirit of Alexandra out of Melissa’s
body.
*****
“Alexandra? Can you hear me in there? Alexandra, we need you to come out!”
Rev shook Melissa’s lifeless body. She was alive and breathing but unconscious, presumably from the stress of it all. It didn’t matter why. All that mattered was Ghost Guard had precious little time. Time he needed for extracting the rogue spirit from the young innocent host body. However, the spirit wasn’t cooperating.
“Hello?” Rev tapped the young woman’s cheek lightly with the back of his materialized hand, solid so as to have the most effect. It didn’t work. He glanced at Brutus, who only shrugged his immense and smoldering ashen shoulders, chagrined confusion on his brooding face.
In a faraway corner of the basement in the Hardgrove home, they set up a makeshift extraction point. Extraction, the process of removing a spirit from a body in which the spirit didn’t belong, took patience, and often times a firm hand.
Rev tapped the girl’s cheek again, this time a little firmer. Then he slapped her.
“Emile! Emile is that you?” Melissa’s eyes opened and fixed on Rev. “Emile! I thought I’d lost you!”
This was the moment, the shining and stellar culmination of countless hours of prep and execution. The climax of their mission. Alexandra Petrovic departed her host body, leaving the corporeal safety of the physical realm for the vulnerable state of an itinerant spirit. Like a translucent holograph, the basement walls, garden hoses, washing machine, and worn out water skis all could be seen through her. She had an ethereal beauty, a misty, dewy dreaminess. Skin like a heavenly fire. Long hair drifting in some unearthly liquid. The second she left Melissa’s body, the teenage girl slumped in a heap on a stack of wood pellet sacks. Brutus, with imperceptible speed, captured her before she hit the concrete floor. He cradled her gently and sat her down, then watched what happened next in stunned wonder.
Ghost Guard 2: Agents of Injustice Page 4
