Max swallowed hard.
“It’s time for me to meet your mama.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Vera
They worried briefly that Max’s mom might have finally left the confines of her bedroom sanctuary, but as soon as they turned the corner to his street, Vera felt a pulley system loop around her chest and wheel her close. His mom was still there.
Vera slowed the car, Father Chuck sitting in the passenger seat staring out the window while Maxwell bounced his knee behind them, rocking the sedan. In the light of day, his house looked like most others in Roaring Creek, completely forgettable. A petite white ranch house sulked in disrepair under an intolerably bright sky. The asphalt driveway, spread pitch-black when fresh, was now a dusty white, cracked and patched. An orange-breasted robin rested on the shingled roof pecking at gutters brimming with globs of rotten leaves. There was a garage, its door splattered with years of snow-shovel muck and hurricane slime.
The only remarkable aspect was the front door—the color of a perfect, plump tomato dangling on the vine. All the other homes on Stone Street had maple, ivory, black, or, at most, evergreen doors. But not the Olivers’; their door screamed to be noticed.
Only, no one noticed what was happening inside.
The neighbors abandoned this family. They left a boy to care for a newborn, then silently watched for seven years while his mother wilted with grief, seeking solutions everywhere, from a bottle to possessed strangers.
Vera reached for the handle of her car door, her heart kicking up a notch. Then she touched a foot on the pavement and instantly felt the rush of a ski’s first slip down a black-diamond slope. The exhilaration returned, and with it a sense of absolute rightness.
She needed to be here.
And it wanted her here. Something had changed.
Father Chuck slipped out of the car, a black medical bag in his hand.
“Your parents asked me to keep you away.” Father Chuck peered at Vera. “They don’t think you should be here.”
“My parents are on another continent.” Vera stared him straight in the eye. “And you need all the help you can get.”
The priest assessed her conviction, then nodded once. “Just follow my lead. It’s not my first rodeo.” Father Chuck made the sign of the cross, then kissed the crucifix hanging around his neck.
He’d been blessing their basement for as long as Vera was alive, sometimes even staying for Sunday dinner. Yet she never really thought much about him, other than the fact that he made her uncomfortable. Not because he did anything inappropriate, but because he was a priest. It was like seeing your high school principal in a bathing suit at the beach. Father Chuck was an adult in a position of authority, a vocation that was revered in her home, so of course, her natural instinct was to never look him in the eye and speak only when spoken to. Now, for the first time, they were walking side by side. Her mom would be livid.
They cut across the overgrown lawn dotted with the wispy wishes of dandelions. Max kept pace beside her, biting his thumbnail as they moved toward the door.
Vera pulled his hand from his mouth. “It’s gonna be okay.”
She had no idea if this were true, but Max slipped on an awkward grin.
The door was unlocked. Apparently, demons weren’t concerned about armed robbery, or maybe they welcomed violent chaos. Father Chuck stepped a cowboy boot in the entry, and immediately a low growl reverberated down the hall, through the living room, and onto the stoop.
Maxwell tensed beside Vera, eyes flinching. That was the sound of his mother. This creature had taken her body and her face, his father’s voice, his childhood memories, and his hugs and kisses. And it left that sound.
Vera grabbed his hand. “I got you,” she whispered.
They stepped into the house together.
The chalky scent of smoke had grown in texture over the course of a single day—cigarette, marijuana, matchbook, and campfire, now tangled together and dried on their tongues. Max coughed into a fist, trying to force out the stench—or maybe their reality.
No electrical lights were on, and all the curtains and blinds were drawn. The only glow came from the wavering flames of every votive in a knickknack and every taper on a table.
They turned in to the hall, and Vera’s chest seized. The layout, the actual physics of the home, looked warped.
Two candle wall sconces were lit, their flames starbursts, beams of gold too luminous and high, bouncing off the white ceiling in odd angles, making the space seem endless. The ivory moldings of the bathroom and bedrooms tilted left and right, zoomed in and out. Was it the smoke? Was it making her dizzy? The floor sloped downward, the gravitational pull adding to the force already reeling in Vera, but more than that, the pine boards seemed to breathe, bowing and heaving with her every step, threatening to give way.
A come-hither hiss slithered down the hall with a curled, bent finger, daring them to keep going. They did, her pulse accelerating and Max’s breath in her ear. A gust of wind rushed by, gritty with dry heat, swishing back Vera’s black shirt like a parachute. She smoothed it down. Then the front door slammed. Everyone jumped.
“You’re back,” greeted a baritone voice. “And you brought a priest. It’s not even my birthday.”
They all paused. This wasn’t hypnosis, and this wasn’t some form of “influence.” The demon speaking to them now was in complete control of this woman. It possessed her fully. Vera knew that for sure.
“I thought we should be introduced,” called the priest, his voice calm, but the hand clutching his crucifix shook with betrayal. “Lilith, I’m Father Chuck.”
“Don’t waste my time. You’re more boring than your sermons, Father. But not your frieeends. They’re fun to play with,” the voice singsonged, a chorus of guttural tones harmonized inside a human body.
Maxwell’s grip grew clammy in Vera’s fingers, and when the three of them finally reached the doorway of the master bedroom, Vera slammed to a halt. The space looked massive; his mother rested on the bed, but it seemed impossibly far away. And there was smog. Smoke no longer plumed out of her nose and mouth; instead it was everywhere, hovering in the room like a low-lying cloud. Vera could see his mother’s face, but the legs of the bed were obscured. The fog stayed low, oily and swirling.
More black candles lit the room, covering the dresser, the nightstands, the hope chest, and the shrine in the closet. There were assorted bouquets of flowers, and crystal glasses full of dark burgundy wine. There was a dead goat rotting in the closet, flies zigzagging between it and a pile of charred chickens and pigeons, their bodies blackened. People had been here. A lot of people. A lot of offerings. She was holding court.
Vera clutched her stomach as the stench of decomposing flesh mixed with the smoke in the air.
“I would have cleaned up”—his mother gestured to the mess—“but I didn’t know you were coming.” She formed a Joker’s grin.
“Mom?” Max’s voice was unsteady, his head flitting around as if unsure where he was. “Can you hear me? Are you in there?”
“Ah, Maxie-boy, your mutha’s not here. Wanna talk wit’ me?”
Vera’s eyes pulled wide, her mouth halfway to the floor. That had to be his father’s voice. Max’s skin turned dishwater gray, tears springing to his lower lashes.
“It’s not real,” she whispered.
“Oh, his dad’s real dead.” Its voice returned to a deep bass.
This was beyond cruel. Rage built in Vera’s chest, which only added to the hellish joy in its expression.
Then its skin grew brittle. White foam oozed from the corner of its mouth, and its hair shriveled into crusty black cotton candy. But it was the eyes, brimming with fiery vengeance and intellect, that made Vera’s chest burn like lava.
It wants you, Vera. Oh, how it wants you….
She
forced herself to stand taller.
“I know what happened, between you and my parents.” Her voice was strong. Her parents had beaten it before. Or, at least, temporarily. And she was their daughter.
Serpentine sounds sissed with a flicking tongue. “They failed. All these years, I was right here, and they didn’t notice.” It leaned forward, body swaying like a cobra. “Others have. Sooo many others.”
“Because you prey on the weak,” Father Chuck shot back. “Why not pick on someone your own size?”
“Careful, careful. Is that an invitation?” It took a deep inhale, the smog in the room heaving toward its flared crimson nostrils with such force, it lifted Vera onto her toes. “I…smell…fear….”
Maxwell whimpered. It was involuntary, and Vera knew he was probably embarrassed, but she also understood that this was the person who kissed his boo-boos and tucked him in.
The beast laughed, a snarl of a hell dog barking with delight. “You like ’em weak, don’t you? So malleable, aren’t they? We have that in common.” Its sinister eyes held Vera’s. “Tell me—have any good dreams lately?”
Vera dropped Maxwell’s hand.
Her dreams. It knew about them.
No, no, no…She’d hoped—no, she was convinced—that the sleepwalking and dreams were signs that she was growing into her gift, like her mother. She thought she was coming into her place in the family. She wasn’t sure she wanted that, but she was positive she didn’t want the alternative. Just the suggestion from her mother had been an insult.
Vera stumbled back a step, her shoulder hitting into the corner of the doorjamb.
“Death is just like falling asleep,” it threatened. “Wanna try it?”
“In nómine Patris et Fílii et Spíritus Sancti,” Father Chuck recited in Latin, making the sign of the cross.
“So predictable! Don’t you see? You’re…too…weak!” Its skull thrashed, arms rising. Then the sheet that covered its body fluttered up with its limbs, forming wings, bleached white and sprawling. All at once, the hefty curtains, made of long pearly blackout fabric, tore from the walls with the splintering crack of crumbling Sheetrock. The drapes tumbled to the hardwood floors, cheap metal rods clattering against the boards as the morning sun exploded into the room in perfect spotlight beams. Smoke rose in spiraling bits of grime, pirouetting in a blazing light so blinding, Vera squinched her eyes.
That was when she saw it. For just a moment, a vision crept up from deep inside:
Maxwell’s mother is stunning in ivory linen pants and a springy floral blouse. There are balloons in the yard. No, there are three balloons. Maxwell and Chloe grip the milky globes tied with string, waiting for her. But she is here, inside this room, sitting on an unmade bed, her chest constricting so much Vera reaches for her own heart. It has been years, and the grief corroding her soul hasn’t lessened. Not for a moment.
Until today.
Endless nights, she’s prayed and prayed for a magical fix that will transform her very being back into who she was before, that will stop the constant agony found in moving through each day. But there are no answers. There is no respite.
Then she touched it.
Her fingers brushed against the cool surface of the Angel, and for a fluttering instant the perpetual ache that infiltrated her bones, muscles, organs, and breath lifted into the ether. It was only a flicker, but it was enough to convince her. It is enough to devote her. She wants more. She wants to feel that relief all the time.
Vera watches this woman, this mother, sit in her bedroom and lift the Angel of Tears from a crisp white shopping bag. She carries it to the shelf in her closet. “I can’t keep going on like this. I miss you so much, and they deserve better,” she whispers, laying fresh lilies on her newly formed shrine. “I just wish everything could go back to the way it was before. I want to feel like I did today, all the time. Make me forget what I lost. Help me move on without this pain. I’ll do anything. Anything.”
Then the flash was gone.
Vera was again standing in the bedroom, Maxwell at her side, while the priest recited prayers that Vera knew wouldn’t work.
“You. Have. No. Power!” it screamed at Father Chuck. “I give life. I give death! I feed the mourning, the grieving, the damaged!” Its throaty intonation held dozens, maybe hundreds, of chanting voices inside. “I bring the claws that slice the flesh of this Earth. They will all join me soon, and together we will fight as one. We will win. We will win! We will win over all!”
“Hold her down! Help me!” Father Chuck rushed toward the bed. “Grab my bag!” Vera didn’t think. She lifted the leather case and raced after him. Max was rooted behind.
Then the priest pointed toward the window, arm stiff, eyes wide. “Vera! No!”
She turned to look.
So did the demon.
The scream of a trumpet rang out from the depths of its throat, and when Vera turned back, a giant syringe was plunged into the beast’s neck. The priest beat the devil with a made-you-look trick. Wow. This really wasn’t his first rodeo.
“The straps! Now!” He pointed to his bag, and Vera dug into the satchel, navigating past a plastic bucket to find hunks of thick leather. She yanked them out, metal clasps clanging.
Maxwell’s mom writhed on the bed. Its eyes rolled upward, neck so rigid Vera could strum the protruding veins.
Then the priest yanked a tan strap from Vera’s hands and began securing it to the bed frame. He looped it around one wrist, unafraid to touch the demon, its body now sedated. Whatever was in that needle worked fast.
It let out a roar. Putrid wind gusted from its slobbering jowls, blowing the hair from Vera’s cheeks.
Father Chuck darted to her side of the bed, not asking for assistance, and she was not sure she could give it. Whatever he injected weakened the body, but not the mind. Its infernal gaze still burned.
“You like him in your house, don’t you?” It hissed. “You like him on your pretty floral sofa. Tell me, does your mother know your impure thoughts?”
Vera bit her lips, drawing blood, refusing to respond, to feed it.
Its bulging eyes blazed toward Max. “Maybe I should tell the girlfriend your thoughts? How relieved you are to have that little brat off your hands? How you resent the day your sister was born?”
“Shut up!” Max snapped, stepping forward with a clenched fish.
The corners of its mouth twisted in a sneer.
“Don’t speak to it!” hollered the priest, struggling with the second set of restraints as it jerked and twitched. He reached for the plastic bedpan.
“Rather close, aren’t you, Father?” It flicked its tongue, licking a glob of spittle from its mouth. “Tell me, am I hiding my true face now? Do you like my mumbo jumbo?”
A spiked ball lodged in Vera’s throat. That was what Father Chuck had said an hour ago while discussing TSC. It sounds like this group is hiding its true face, drawing in folks with its self-help mumbo jumbo, and before they know it, they’re leaving offerings for the devil.
It heard their conversation when they weren’t in the room. It knew what her aunt’s sofa looked like. It was aware of Vera’s dreams.
It was everywhere.
Maybe it really was inside her.
The foul stench of skunked meat grew stronger than the smell of smoke, spinning Vera’s already stunned brain. The beast broke out in a cackle.
Father Chuck made the sign of the cross. “Exorcizamus te—” But before he could finish the next word, the beast lifted its knee high and thrust its bare, curled foot so fast into Father Chuck’s chest, Vera hardly saw the movement until the priest was reeling across the room.
His body soared as if electrocuted, his aging back cracking against the drywall, a web of fractured lines spreading across the wall’s surface. He slumped in a heap by the closet, near the shrine.
Vera rushed toward him, medical procedures clicking through her brain. Then his spine contorted, chest heaving. He wailed, gripping at his rib cage. The muscles in his forearms strained beneath tufts of white hairs. Veins pulsed on his forehead. His eyes burst red with broken blood vessels. He groaned toward the heavens.
It’s going to kill him.
Vera pulled at his nearly two-hundred-pound frame, not waiting for a stretcher, a neck brace, or any other protocols. If he didn’t get out of this room soon, he was dead. Somehow, she hoisted him to his feet. He found his legs beneath him. She tossed his hairy arm around her shoulders and took his weight. Then she turned to the door, stumbling.
“You’ll die! All of you! My gift of death will be unleashed on the world. Embrace me now. Know what others have seen before you. Join your mother! Your father!”
Its threats were a fuzzy buzz in Vera’s ears. All of her senses focused on the rise and fall of Father Chuck’s chest. His legs could move, and his back could shift. But before her, Maxwell had turned to granite. Smoke swirled at his feet, his eyes hypnotized. No. Not you. Vera didn’t have time to gently return him to his senses, and she was not about to lose him. She barreled into him, crashing so hard, she practically threw Father Chuck’s body like a battering ram. The shock was enough to push Maxwell out of the doorway and into the hall. He thudded against a wall, smacking his head and breaking his hypnotic gaze.
He rubbed his eyes; then, without a word, he grabbed Father Chuck’s other arm and flung it over his shoulders.
Together they dragged the priest down the hall.
They heaved him out of the house.
They lugged him into the car.
Then, and only then, did Maxwell start to cry, his body shaking, tears silent.
Vera drove. And for the first time, she thought she finally understood what was happening.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Max
Max rolled down the rear window, the humid air smacking his face. They were rushing the priest to the hospital. Vera was afraid he was having a heart attack. Father Chuck disagreed. He wanted to return to the rectory. Or maybe to Vera’s house? Max wasn’t sure. Their words were traveling through a tin can, down a string, and into his brain, all garbled and jumbled by the time they got there.
Small Town Monsters Page 16
