by Rick Wood
Three headed – the head of a bull, man, and ram. Riding a bear. It felt so familiar. Then the image struck the forefront of his mind; when he had crossed over as a child, he had seen it – a man with the head of a bull, a man, and a ram, claiming to be Balam. He had stood before him holding onto his sister.
Yet he had never heard of this apparent demon before. How could his mind have been so accurate on something he knew nothing about?
And why on earth would a king of hell be interested in him anyway?
Ludicrous.
“Come on, you need to get your suit on. We leave in half an hour.”
He leant his head back and closed his eyes. He couldn’t think of anything worse. He had been friends with Jenny for so long, her family all thought of him as family, it would be expected of him to go. He just hated christenings. The whole thing felt like an initiation into a cult to him. He despised religion, and he despised the process of indoctrinating a young child into something they were not old enough to understand yet.
“I’ll be ready,” he grunted, rising from his chair and heading into the living room to change, coffee in hand.
*
Jenny glanced at Eddie in the passenger seat beside her. He would actually be quite a good-looking young man if he took care of himself. As it was, his hair was a mess, his facial hair unkempt, and his tidy suit looked like a scruffy mess upon him. He was also as pale as the moon.
She pulled up in the church car park and they both got out of the car. Eddie flinched at the sun in the sky. He normally sat at home in front of day-time television all day; he wasn’t used to the light. Wondering what the theme on Jerry Springer was that afternoon and regretting that he was missing it, he followed Jenny into the church and greeted her family.
He shook hands with Jenny’s parents, her sister (and mother of the boy getting christened), and their family friends he knew so well. He knew these people better than his own parents, or even his foster parents. He had spent most of his adolescence in a sleeping bag on their living room floor, or hanging around for their family film nights, not to mention when he lived with them for two years from the age of sixteen. It was the closest thing he’d ever had to a family life.
He stood at the back, his arms folded, squinting in the light and staring at the crowd that gathered around the altar. The vicar held the helpless baby over the water, as Jenny and the other godparents stood on either side.
“Do you promise to guide this child on his voyage to God?” the vicar asked.
“I do,” Jenny replied. Eddie scoffed. These were the people Jenny had concealed her sexuality from for so long. The church had been so negative about it, he was surprised they were even letting her do this. Then it occurred to him that the vicar probably didn’t even know. He wondered what would happen if he was to burst the information out.
“Will you pray for him, draw him by your example into the community of faith and walk with him in the way of Christ?”
“I will.”
Eddie turned away and covered his eyes, exhaling with aggravation as he contemplated how much he detested this. When he turned back, the vicar was staring at him.
The vicar didn’t move. He remained rooted to the spot, the baby held midair, his eyes glued to Eddie’s.
Eddie looked around himself to check if it was someone else that he was staring at. Sure enough, he was the only one in the vicar’s eye line. Everyone else began to follow suit, looking between Eddie and the vicar like a tennis match, confused as to why the vicar had abruptly paused the service to stare at this random man. Nobody knew what was going on.
Eddie became uncomfortable. “What?” he whispered, barely able to get his words out. He did not like having this attention.
“Is everything okay, Vicar?” asked Jenny. The vicar slowly handed the baby to her, not taking his eyes from Eddie for a moment. He ambled from behind the altar and the congregation moved aside to allow a clear path between Eddie and him.
“What?” Eddie begged. “I really don’t know what’s going on.”
With abrupt speed, the vicar marched toward Eddie and stood directly in front of him. He reached his hand out and placed it on Eddie’s heart, his eyes turning to stone and his lip raised in a sneer. His face turned red as his body shook.
“You…” he muttered.
“What?” Eddie asked fervently, desperate for an answer as to why he was being singled out. He had kept all those thoughts inside his head, hadn’t he?
“You…” the vicar snarled. “Are not welcome here.”
Eddie frowned. He looked around, hoping someone would make some kind of sense of this. No one spoke. Everyone just stared. The entire church froze out of awkwardness and fear.
“Don’t look around at them for help!” the vicar spat in Eddie’s face. “They won’t help you! They are all God’s children. You, you foul wench, you are not welcome here.”
“I don’t know what you are talking ab –”
“Out! Out!” The vicar nudged Eddie backwards toward the door, walking quickly in front of him. “Be gone!”
Eddie glanced toward Jenny and shrugged his shoulders at her. She shook her head in agitation; another family event, another wreckage by Eddie.
Once Eddie had finally been ushered beyond the threshold of the church, he stood there, staring at the vicar in utter confusion.
“And don’t ever come back!” bellowed the vicar with extreme hostility in his voice, slamming the door shut in front of him.
A few passers-by looked at him and he glanced toward them awkwardly. He had no idea what had happened. Did the vicar just call him a foul wench?
All he knew was that there was something more to what was happening than he understood.
16
31 December 1999
Eddie rests his head against the wall and lets out a long, deep sigh. His legs are aching, his forehead drips with sweat and his heart beats harder than he can take.
The creature simply rests on the ceiling above, laughing. Cackling at his misfortune. Laughing at the no-hope, defeated arse that sits beneath it.
“Give up yet?” it speaks, in a voice far too deep and sinister to be coming out of the body of a teenage girl.
Eddie closes his eyes and attempts to calm his breathing down. He disregards the demon’s taunts; rising to them only fuels the evil of this sadistic beast. He is up against it and he knows it more now than ever.
He has been fighting this demon for longer than he knows.
“I will not be giving up today,” he mutters, assuring himself more than the possessed girl before him. “You can do all you will to me, I will not leave until I have cast you out of Adeline’s body and returned my sister’s soul to me.”
It booms a deep, grand laugh that echoes against the walls of the room. It peels itself off the ceiling and floats in the air above him. Items fly around it in a whirlwind; rubbish, paper, fluids, everything in the room is off the floor and floating around it. The bed rattles and the windows furiously open and shut.
Eddie rises to his knees. He prepares himself both physically and mentally to return to battle. He cannot let this thing win. No matter what it costs him.
“The eve of the new millennium,” he states. “It was always said that today is the day hell would attempt to rain down upon us. So many people waiting for the second coming of Christ that they weren’t even aware of the coming of you.”
He spits the final ‘you’ at the demon with venom and gritted teeth. He can feel his body filling with hatred. This is the thing beseeching the form of this guiltless girl.
This is the entity imprisoning his dear, dead, chastised sister.
“And you are the one to stop me?” grins the demon.
“Yes, I am.”
“And why you, Eddie?”
Eddie bows his head, calms himself, clenches his fists and lifts his head again; renewed, prepared.
“Because I have the sight. That is why you are after
me, is it not?”
Deep, booming laughter echoes out of the mouth of the innocent young girl.
“So. You’re Balam, huh?”
“The one and only. And you will bow before me.”
“Balam?” he confirms with pure horror, prompting the demon to reveal its deception. Though he knew it wouldn’t. The power of this demon was far more than he’d seen before. It felt right.
The demon nods. It nods as it reads the acknowledgement dawning on Eddie’s face.
“You are Balam?” he enquires with disdain. “A great and powerful king of hell, commanding over forty legions of demons. You are three-headed, are you not? A head of a bull, a man and a ram. Flaming eyes and tail of a serpent. Balam, the biblical magician.”
“The very one,” smiles the demon.
“You are a ruler in hell. Demons are petty thieves who take over people’s bodies, you are a ruler of demons. Why on earth would you take one of our girls?”
The creature just smiles. The face of a girl, the mind of the despicable. And it laughs. Eddie puts on a strong façade, but inside, he is cowering.
“Where is my sister?”
Laughter. More damn laughter.
“I said, where is my sister?”
“Are you forgetting about how you need to save poor Adeline?”
“Then you do not have her soul. I have freed her.”
Laughter turns to smirking. It incenses Eddie.
Enough.
He produces a flask of holy water and flings it upon the demon. It flinches. The sound of burning and singeing arises from Adeline’s skin.
“Let this girl go!” he declares in an imposing voice. “Let this child of God return to her rightful body. Be gone, beast!”
He plants his foot against the wall, giving him a push up that he uses to grab the throat of Balam. He brings the demon down and slams it against the floor, mounting it. As he does this, he produces a crucifix that he presses up against the face of the creature; harder and harder, until it writhes in pain.
“The power of Christ compels you! The power of God compels you!” His eyes narrow. “I compel you!”
The demon closes its eyes and breathes heavily, soaking up the anger and hostility of its opponent. It holds its arms out and begins to rise. Eddie remains balanced upon its torso as it levitates in midair. Eddie tries to stay still, to not fall off. If he gets knocked unconscious, God knows what the demon would do to him then.
The demon’s head turns. It turns and turns until Eddie is watching the girl’s head turn in a complete three-hundred-sixty-degree rotation. Staring wide-eyed, Eddie watches as it flings its eyelids open to reveal two eyeballs of complete white.
“You do not scare me, beast!”
With a loud scream, in which Eddie is sure he can hear multiple voices, the beast sails across the room and halts beside a wall, sending Eddie flying into the wall and onto the floor.
He feels his forehead. He’s bleeding. He clambers to his knees, shaking the dizziness from in front of his eyes.
The demon sits on the edge of the bed, watching, waiting. It taps its foot and drums its hand on its knee. “Having some trouble?” it enquires.
Eddie lifts his head and brushes a strand of hair out of his eye and back into his perfectly parted haircut. He dabs his lip also, feeling a cut there. He licks his lip with his tongue as he stands. He sets his feet shoulder-width apart, straightens his legs and regains his perfect posture.
“Adeline, I am talking directly to you now.”
“Adeline isn’t here…”
“You need to be strong. I know it’s hard, but you need to fight too. It’s no good just me fighting from the outside; you’ve got to fight from the inside. I know you can, girl, because you’re strong. I can still feel you there, so you’re strong.”
“You’re a fool.”
17
18t August 1995
Eddie stood on the porch, unable to believe he was about do what he was about to do. He could see a dreamcatcher floating about above him as numerous cats brushed against his ankles before an unkempt door covered in weeds. He rubbed some sleep out of his eyes and banged on the door.
“Enter,” he heard from inside. He lifted his hand out and turned the door handle, creaking the door ajar. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.
In front of him was a grand set of marble stairs. To his left, a large living room, and to his right what he assumed was the kitchen. Against the walls were bookcases covered in dust, with tattered, plain-covered books. Eddie picked out a few titles as he walked past: ‘History of the Occult,’ ‘Manipulating the Elements,’ Intermediate Tarot Reading.’
“In here,” came a voice to his left. He turned and cautiously stepped toward the living room. As he entered, he admired all of the various ornaments around the place. There were grand objects of pottery, paintings older than Eddie could imagine of various people who would be long gone, and a few mirrors with grand, gold frames.
He made his way forward, past an armchair that must have been from the 1920s, covered in rips, and over the dusty, fluff-ridden carpet. Sitting at a rickety, wooden table before him was a woman, smiling.
“Eddie?” she asked. He nodded. She held her hand out for him to take a seat and he placed himself opposite her, sitting awkwardly on the edge of the chair.
She was a rather weighty woman, whose appearance clearly met the stereotype of a psychic. She had her hair tucked back in some kind of purple cloth; her red-and-purple gown hung low off her arms and her body, and her fingers were far bigger than they needed to be. Every time she spoke, Eddie couldn’t help but notice the waddle underneath her chin shaking.
“I don’t really know what I’m doing here,” he admitted. “I’m an atheist.”
“Most don’t,” she smiled grandly. “But there must be a reason you wish to see me.”
“There is…” he began and trailed off. He hadn’t even begun to think about how he was going to put this into words. “There’s a woman. She looks – she has black hair, scarred skin. She’s been following me around since I was a child.”
“Since you were a child, you say?”
“I saw her once when I was in a coma as a kid, then again in a coma a few months ago. Then, I saw…”
He trailed off as he saw the face of Cassy in his mind, her tearful eyes of pain, the scars over her naked body.
“In a coma again?”
“Huh?” He brought himself back into the room, and attempted to recall the last time he’d seen the demonic woman in real life. “Outside my therapist’s window. Pointing at me.”
She studied him carefully, soaking up every word he said, pondering, emulating an air of wisdom that Eddie was quite sure must be fabricated.
“Take my hands, Eddie,” she instructed, and lifted her hands out. With reluctance, Eddie withdrew his hands from his lap and placed them in hers.
“What I’m going to do now,” she explained, “I’m going to read you. I’m going to look at your past, your present and your future.”
Eddie nodded, not completely sure what she was on about.
“It is essential – no, it is crucial – that you do not let go of my hands. Whatever happens. Understood?”
Eddie nodded.
“Okay, we shall begin.”
She closed her eyes and wriggled in her chair, getting comfortable. Then she went quiet. Eddie watched her. She just sat there, her eyes closed, completely still. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but he would have thought she would do something more than sit opposite him with her eyes closed and his hands in hers.
He looked around, his eyes wandering out of boredom. He noticed a few more paintings around the house, some antlers off a dead animal, another grand sculpture of –
“Eeeeuuuurrrrggghhhh,” she gargled. Eddie almost jumped out of his skin. He looked at her peculiarly, studying her. Had she just made that sound?
“Aaaaaarrggghhh,” she murmured again. Her eyelids flickered and her
head began to shake.
The lights flashed. Eddie looked around himself. Had he just seen that? The lights went dim, then on, he was sure of it. Or had he imagined it?
With an abrupt movement of her head, the psychic’s neck turned and she was facing directly upwards. She screamed. A large, manic scream, indicating someone in complete distress.
“Are you okay?” Eddie whispered.
Her head clamped back into position, facing straight ahead. Her eyes remained completely closed. But she started shaking. Vibrating, like a bubbling pot, pulsating like boiling water, waving Eddie’s hands pugnaciously from side to side. It became more and more violent until her whole body was jerking in a seizure.
Eddie tried to withdraw his hands. He knew he was told not to, but this was too much. It was no good. Her hands were completely gripped to his and he couldn’t get out of it if he wanted to.
“Wake up!” he shouted, continually pulling his hands back, attempting to get them loose.
Eventually, he managed to jerk himself completely out of her grip and fell flat out on his arse. She stood without hesitation and backed up into the corner of the room, staring at him. Her eyes were wide and her expression was one of complete, stiff, terror and bewilderment.
“What?” Eddie asked, feeling like it was a stupid question.
“I…” she tried to speak, but remained rooted to the spot. “I… can’t help you…”
She turned away and buried herself into the corner of the room, shoving her face in her hands and crying. She was rapidly shaking her head, saying, “No, no, no, no,” repeatedly under her voice.
Eddie got to his feet and backed up to the door, deciding this was a good time to go.
She turned around in a sudden movement. “Wait!”
Eddie froze.
She grabbed a piece of paper from a dresser next to her and wrote down a number, cautiously edged toward him and reached it out to him, keeping a safe distance. Once he had taken it, she backed up again.
“That’s the number of a paranormal investigator, maybe he can help you,” she spoke, her eyes still transfixed on him. “But I can’t. Sorry, child, but I can’t… May God be with you.”
