After The Exorcism: Book One

by Tabitha Swann

  “Let me buy you some pancakes or something,” Tara said, glancing at the approaching woman.

  The woman was coming closer, trying to hold onto the sack that was thrashing violently in her hand, and saying something they couldn’t hear over the sound of the car’s heater.

  “I can’t leave you here,” Tara said with a look of pleading in her eyes.

  The woman’s voice was becoming clearer.

  “From all sin!” she called. “Deliver us, O Lord! From all evil, deliver us!”

  The words were like a punch in the face for Scout. She recognized them. They were parts of the exorcism that clawed up out of the blur. The priests used the same words. The woman was close enough that they could see her bag was starting to drip with blood

  Scout nodded. “I’d like that,” she said. “Please. Anything but this. Anything but this.”

  Tara dropped the car into drive and left quickly. Scout glanced at the woman in the passenger-side mirror as they left her behind. The woman was shouting. She threw her sack on the ground. Something like meat splashed out across the ground.

  *

  Scout tried to eat her hamburger slowly even though she was still running only on the peanut butter sandwich she had for breakfast. Tara picked at a brown paper bag filled with fries.

  “How often do you see that woman outside your building?” Tara said.

  “Lately, every other night, I’d say. I don’t know,” Scout said, “do you think maybe she lives there and I just haven’t noticed her before?”

  “I think you’d have noticed someone like that,” Tara said.

  Scout nodded and continued eating.

  “When she was shouting those words at us,” Tara said, “you looked like you recognized them.”

  “They’re prayers I’ve heard before.” Scout wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “I don’t remember hardly anything of the exorcism, but bits and pieces come through sometimes. One of the pieces is that prayer. The two priests would shout it together at me.”

  Thinking about being tied to that bed again made Scout nauseous. She ate through it, though. Normally, she didn’t like to eat in front of people, especially not in a public place, but her stomach growled, demanding action, and the eating was a respite from talking.

  Tara tore open her bag of fries and told Scout to help herself if she wanted any. “Do you remember the priests?” she added.

  Scout shook her head. “I know their names, because it was in all the papers. They were charged with assault after my aunt came by and saw the state of my body. But there was nothing done about it.”

  “Do you think they helped you?”

  “I wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t,” Scout said. “I’m sure of that. But it doesn’t make me any more comfortable with the idea of what they did. Being tied down like that, completely… I don’t know…”

  “Helpless…” Tara said.

  Scout glanced up at her.

  “You’re a strong girl,” Tara said. “Dr Maddox said that about you when he said he’d told you about the group. I think he’s right.”

  “I don’t want to go back to all that,” Scout said. “It was the worst time of my life.”

  “Such a short life,” Tara said, knocking on the wooden table. “Don’t tempt fate. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that things can always get worse. You’re always just fine until you’re not.”

  “I’m glad I came to the group,” Scout said.

  “The group is only part of it,” Tara said. “It helps you to face things head on by forcing you to put them into words. Putting things into words has a way of making things seem smaller. The only way to move past something is to own it, to make it part of who you are rather than denying it. You can’t control something if you run from it. Do you meditate, Scout?”

  Scout nodded. She had never discussed it with anyone before and her face turned red.

  “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Tara said. “One of the misconceptions people have about meditation is that it’s about sitting and ignoring the world, like sleeping while you’re awake. But that’s not the case at all, as I’m sure you’ve experienced. It’s about noticing everything, about feeling more, about studying your existence and letting yourself see everything that you are.”

  “I’ve thought about trying to find out more about what happened to me,” Scout said. “I can’t ask my parents.”

  “You don’t speak to them?”

  Scout shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “They didn’t listen to me,” Scout said, scrunching up her hamburger wrapper. “They thought I was on drugs, or that I was crazy. The first thing they tried to do when something was wrong was to try and get rid of me, put me someplace.”

  “The C word,” Tara said, nodding.

  “The C word.”

  “Maybe you can find out about what happened to you from someone else? What about the priests who helped you?”

  Scout stared down at the table.

  “Scout,” Tara said, “we are talking about your body. You said it yourself: you need to understand what happened to it. This is part of who you are. You can own it. You have no reason in the world to be ashamed.”

  “I don’t…” Scout said.

  “Say his name for me again,” Tara said. “Once more.”

  Scout was quiet.

  “He should live in fear of you,” Tara said.

  Scout said it. “Asmodeus,” she said, and it felt easier than the last time.

  Tara grinned at her. Scout wondered if she realized exactly what that name meant to her.

  “What happened to you,” Scout said, “did you ever find out what it was? It’s stopped, right?”

  “It’s stopped,” Tara said, “but it never goes away. I still wake up in the night sometimes and find myself waiting to hear something in the house.”

  “I feel the same way sometimes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m just waiting,” Scout said. “Like I’m waiting for him to come back.”

  Tara shifted in her seat. “What did it feel like?” she said. “Having something that powerful inside you?”

  Scout frowned, unsure what she was getting at.

  “Most people, even those who believe in God,” Tara said, “they can only feel some vague faith about it. You, you’ve had direct contact.”

  “Not with God,” Scout said.

  “No, no with God, but with something. Something ancient, something not of this world, something more than us. What did it have to say?”

  “Lies,” Scout said. “It only talked in lies and threats.”

  “You touched the afterlife,” Tara said.

  “The afterlife touched me,” Scout said.

  Tara reached across the table and touched Scout’s hand. Scout withdrew her hand slightly.

  Tara held onto it.

  Chapter 7

  Our Lady of Mercy Rest Home was on the outskirts of St. Louis, Missouri, set near the boundary of where the suburbs met the trailer parks. It was run-down French Colonial house which, twenty years ago, must have made quite an impression. Ivy crept up from the overgrown front yard up the beaten white walls, completely covering two large windows. A half-dead willow tree was slumped over near the entrance. Beneath it was a small bench, upon which two nurses were smoking cigarettes together in silence. It was three p.m. and a cold afternoon. Scout had left Detroit on a cramped Greyhound bus at five in the morning and the journey had taken its toll on her. She yawned into the palm of her hand and took a sip of Coke before pushing the iron gate open and walking up the broken path.

  Scout was almost glad of the tiredness which robbed her of some of her nervous energy. She had tried to sleep on the bus, but found herself sat next to a twitchy, talkative man who asked her a lot of questions. He had asked for her number before he got off in Bloomington and she gave him a fake number. He was at least twenty years older than she was and had quite a predatory
stare, so Scout didn’t feel safe dozing next to him. She had time for a short nap before the bus hit St. Louis, but, if anything, it had made her more tired.

  She stopped halfway up the path and looked up at the building.

  Somewhere in there is the man who saved my life, she thought. Father Piotr. I wonder if he remembers me.

  Scout had seen him briefly after the exorcism and then only in photographs. The exorcism had ended quickly and her aunt had moved in and, concerned about her battered state, banned the priests from visiting. The nurse, a twenty-something name Jaimie, seemingly fresh out of college, had been watching a television show on her tablet when Scout showed up, sat at a desk in a corridor with her feet up. She proceeded to talk all about the show the whole way down the corridor, up two flights of stairs, and down another corridor, all the way to the door to Father Piotr’s room. Scout quietly wished she would shut up about dragons and ice zombies and let her think about what she was going to say.

  “I’m not even kidding,” the nurse said, “when all those ice zombies just got up and the ice king was giving it the big starey eyes, it gave me chills. And I watch a lot of J-horror. I don’t get chills easy.”

  Scout knocked on the door and the nurse mercifully left her alone.

  “Come in,” called a voice with a familiar thick Polish accent.

  The room was sparsely decorated, with only a small crucifix on the wall, a portable television-VCR combo on top of the dresser and a shelf lined with Robert Ludlum and James Patterson books. When Father Piotr saw Scout enter, his hand immediately came up to partially cover his eyes. His hand trembled. He was sat in his bed with the television playing a VHS of an old soccer game.

  “Good Lord,” he said. He pushed himself up and stood with the bed between him and Scout. “Is it really you?”

  Scout said nothing. She swallowed and waited to see his response. She had no idea what he remembered or what he felt about her.

  “Liliana?” he said. “Is it really you?”

  “It’s me,” Scout said. She shrugged off her backpack and laid it on the floor.

  “How did you find me?”

  “That’s what you’re going to ask me?”

  “I’m sorry,” Father Piotr said. “Please, sit down. Sit down.”

  Scout pulled up a wooden chair that sat against the wall.

  “What have-” Father Piotr said, “Where have you been living?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Scout said.

  “It’s so good to see you, Liliana.”

  “Please, stop calling me that,” Scout said.

  “But,” Father Piotr said, “that is your name.”

  “Not anymore. I haven’t seen my family in two years. I don’t want anything to do with that life now.”

  Piotr sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Are you not happy?”

  Scout frowned.

  “We never got a chance to really talk afterwards,” Father Piotr said.

  “I don’t remember any of it,” Scout said.

  “That is normal, yes.”

  “There was nothing normal about what happened to me.”

  “I have seen it before. You were not my first exorcism. You were, however,” he said, pointing, “my last. You were Father Christopher’s first and last exorcism, of course. Poor soul.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “You did not hear about Father Christopher?”

  “Is he the younger priest?”

  Father Piotr nodded. “Very sad,” he said. “He could not live with the things he saw. One day, a few months after we freed you, during the - uh - police investigation, Father Christopher took a shotgun, placed it in his mouth, and… Well… You can imagine.”

  “I want to know what you did to me,” Scout said.

  “What- What do you mean?” Father Piotr looked confused. “We performed the ritual. You were possessed by a particularly vile demon. He told us his name. Do you remember it?”

  “Yes,” Scout said.

  “I won’t speak it. But, this demon nearly killed you.”

  “That much,” Scout said, “I do know. I might not remember the exorcism, but I remember the broken bones afterwards. But, tell me, is the demon gone? Completely?”

  Father Piotr nodded and closed his eyes.

  “There’s nothing left of it inside me?” Scout said.

  “Absolutely not.” Father Piotr seemed almost insulted. He stood and walked over to the window and looked out. He seemed to frown at something, then he turned around.

  “Strange things have been happening,” Scout said. “I can’t explain them. Something… feels wrong.”

  “Asmodeus is dead,” Father Piotr said. “The ritual makes it very clear. There are no shades of gray as far as exorcism is concerned. The demon manifests physically. It is quite a thing to see, let me tell you. Be grateful you do not remember that moment. Once the demon is manifested in the flesh and separated from its host body, it is killed, physically. There is no question.”

  Father Piotr looked uncomfortable.

  “We - uh,” he said. “We buried it.”

  “You… buried it? You buried what?”

  “The demon. It is a physical being once it is extracted. The human body can serve as a gateway between the two worlds. During an exorcism, we are drawing it through completely into our world so that we can kill it by our laws of nature.”

  Scout felt a sudden onrush of panic. “Where did you bury him?”

  “Somewhere no-one will ever find him,” Father Piotr said, nodding. “No. He is gone for good. That, I can promise you.”

  “Could there have been more than one demon inside me? Could another demon be trying to break through?”

  Father Piotr was silent.

  “Tell me,” Scout said.

  “We would have seen it,” Father Piotr said.

  “Someone has been following me,” Scout said. “A woman with something in a sack.”

  “A sack?” Father Piotr walked over and sat opposite Scout on the edge of the bed. “What’s in it?”

  “Something alive,” Scout said. “She waits outside my apartment block and prays.”

  “You must speak with her,” Father Piotr said.

  “What for? She’s absolutely crazy. She looks dangerous.”

  “Trust me,” Father Piotr said, “if she is who I think she is, you want to hear what she has to say.”

  “Why? What’s in the bag?”

  Father Piotr was sweating.

  A knock came at the door and the nurse, Jaimie, called through: “Ready for your meds, Father?”

  “What’s in the bag?” Scout said.

  “Rats,” Father Piotr said. “It’s a bag full of live rats.”

  The door opened quickly and the nurse came in.

  “Meds,” she said. She pointed at a half-eaten tray of unappetizing-looking food and said, “Have you finished?”

  Father Piotr waved her away, saying, “Yes, yes. Thank you.”

  The nurse picked up his dirty fork, which had fallen onto the carpet. She looked at it for a moment, studying it.

  Scout thought about the crazy woman, about what she might want, about the use of a bag of live rats.

  There’s no way I’m speaking to that maniac, she thought. What on earth would I say to-

  “Hail Father Satan,” someone said.

  Scout was confused. It sounded like it came from the nurse, but it didn’t sound like her voice.

  It was a man’s voice.

  “What’s that?” Father Piotr said. He turned to face the nurse.

  “All hail Father Satan,” the nurse said. The voice unsettled Scout as much as what was said.

  It sounded like someone she knew.

  The nurse turned the fork upside down in her hand and jammed it into the neck of Father Piotr.

  “No!” Scout screamed.

  The nurse stabbed the old man repeatedly until he collapsed on his back on his bed with blood gushing from his thr
oat.

  The nurse spoke in three voices at once, the voice of a man, the voice of the nurse, and the voice of something else altogether, something primal and old. The nurse opened her mouth and spoke without moving it, as if the voices emanated from a place deep inside her. The voices said, “Liliana, we are coming. Your flesh and your bones and your soul belong to Father Satan.”

  Scout screamed and backed into the corner, up against the dresser.

  The nurse blinked, closed her mouth and suddenly looked at the bloodied fork in her hand. Her face turn from a blank slate into confusion and from there spread into a grotesque expression of sheer horror as she realized what must have happened.

  “No!” she screamed, the nurse’s voice alone now that the man and the old thing had stopped speaking. “It wasn’t me! I didn’t mean to do it!”

  Scout screamed, “Somebody help!”

  Father Piotr took his last breath as his blood soaked through his bed and poured onto the floor.

  The nurse screamed at Scout, her eyes flooding with tears, and she collapsed to her knees. “It wasn’t me!” she screamed.

  Scout watched in horror as the nurse bolted to her feet and ran for the window.

  “No!” Scout screamed.

  The nurse flung herself through the glass. Scout heard a short scream and then the thump of her body slamming against the concrete three storeys below.

  Scout shut her eyes and shrunk into a ball. She covered her head with her hands.

  “Somebody help!” she screamed.

  She screamed as loud as she could.

  Chapter 8

  The questions were simple. The police assumed Scout knew nothing of what had happened. She had screamed and screamed until someone had come. Her terror was her alibi. The head nurse entered while blood still spurted from Father Piotr’s lifeless body. His face was twisted into an expression of horror, staring blankly beyond the ceiling. Scout wondered where that life had gone, if he was happy already.

  Unable to afford time off work, Scout drank more before each shift. She jumped from her usual two drinks before leaving the apartment to four. Father Piotr’s face still came back to her mind whenever she paused - the words “Hail Father Satan” echoed in her ears - so she tried to keep busy. She took extra hours. She drank more but she also worked harder than ever before, always moving. She couldn’t face being alone in the quiet. That’s where Father Piotr lived now, in the quiet spaces between activities.