by Peter Laws
‘So what about the appeal of exorcism itself?’ Ellis asked.
‘Well, think about it. A mental health diagnosis can feel like a permanent, lifelong label. Yet exorcism claims to cast the problem out forever. And afterwards, you’re welcomed back into the community, because the evil has gone away. By contrast, somebody labelled as schizophrenic may not feel that same sense of welcome. And hey, if the demon comes back, just do another exorcism. I know this sounds odd, but I’m just saying the growth in demand is real … except it’s a lot more complex than lazy theories like we’ve taken prayer out of schools or legalised gay marriage, so the Devil is therefore more rampant.’
Ellis started pacing, with one arm across her. ‘So could exorcism work as a psychological placebo then?’
‘Theoretically yes, but should we therefore encourage exorcism? Absolutely not.’
Kissell tapped his glasses up his nose. They seemed to slip down whenever he got animated. He frequently got animated. ‘Forgive me, but if you’re saying exorcism can work, then what does it matter what’s behind it? Surely, we just help people, no matter what?’
‘Well, for a start, exorcisms don’t always work, hence the repeated requests for more and more of them. This can cause great distress and confusion in the patient. But also, and this is crucial, the mere idea of exorcism can keep people from the treatment they really need.’ Matt clocked Perry’s glare. He tried to speak gently. ‘I interviewed a woman once. When she was a child her parents refused medical help because they were convinced her frequent seizures were demonic possession. She had temporal lobe epilepsy. Whenever she felt a fit coming on she’d hide herself in the family bathroom. Just in case her parents saw it and started casting out demons. She could have died in there, having a fit, alone. Eventually she got out of that family and got the help she needed. But can’t you see how damaging and dangerous that was? All that needless delay of treatment. And that, Reverend Perry, is the real crux … read the news … people die during exorcisms. And sometimes it’s children. Plus, this ritual can exacerbate unstable, violent people who desperately need medical help …’ He looked across at Perry. ‘I believe that’s what happened to Tom Riley.’
‘Excuse me?’ Perry sat bolt upright.
‘I believe you should have persisted with the medical support, and not confused his mind with—’
‘Dammit, I was helping him, and I’ll tell you exactly how …’
Perry started ranting, but Matt quickly phased out from the words because something was happening over the reverend’s shoulder. Bernie Kissell had been quiet for a while. Matt, perhaps foolishly, had assumed this was because he was listening to Matt’s points. But the reason Kissell was silent was because he was praying. Head down, comb-over hanging. In fact, as Perry droned on, Matt saw Kissell lift both hands towards the camera lens. And as he did, a slow, hissing whisper began slithering from the studio speakers. Prayers that were spoken in Pittsburgh were being beamed through space, and were now firing through the amplification system of a cold, English TV studio.
And he said, ‘I call you out. In the saving name of Christ, I call your name and command you to leave this wonderful person. Out. I call you out. out!’
Reverend Perry had already trailed off. He started pointing instead. Not at Abby, like Matt had expected, but towards the audience instead.
‘Look!’ Perry gasped in horror. ‘There’s one of them now.’
A woman in the audience started to scream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Matt’s head, every head in fact, snapped to the middle row, where a huge, muscled chunk of a man was sitting in a baseball cap. Matt had noticed him before, when he first walked in, looking bored and distant and impeccably toned. But now he was reaching one of his huge, trembling hands up his chest. Thick fingers were spider-crawling towards his own throat.
People were already pulling and leaning away from him, including the screaming woman, who had been trying to yank her long cream cardigan free. The end of which was clamped in the man’s other massive fist. She must have seen how much his biceps and chest were bulging through his muscle top, so she’d already given up. Now she frantically climbing out of the wool altogether, yelping as she did it.
Matt heard the rapid footfall of security just as the guy in the cap pushed his chest forward with a sudden spasm. A huge globule of spit sputtered across his lips and covered his chin. More people screamed, but at least the woman was now free. She clambered and crawled directly across the plastic seats, just to get away.
‘Sir!’ one of the security guys shouted, one hand outstretched.
It was too far away for Matt to fully see the muscle man’s face, but that didn’t matter, because his close-up was already on the big screen. The man couldn’t seem to turn his head. It was trapped in an invisible, shivering vice. But his eyes moved. They slid in their sockets towards the oncoming security guards, and his gaze lacked any sense of aggression or threat. Just the watery-eyed, desperate fear of a man drowning. Something was creaking, the man’s plastic chair perhaps?
An older woman in the crowd clearly knew him. People were holding her back, as she sobbed and dropped to her knees. She reached out, shouting, ‘Richie … Richie love … stop it.’ His mother.
Kissell’s prayers filled the studio speakers. And now, Reverend Perry was doing the same.
‘Sir, sir.’ The guards started treading up the stairs slowly. ‘You need to calm down, right now.’
‘Calm down?’ Matt whispered to himself, then he sprang to his feet and hollered across the studio in frustration. ‘He’s having a seizure. Call an ambulance.’
The guards ignored him. They stood gawping as the man’s hand kept crawling up the side of his own face. The grasping fingers slowly tugged the baseball cap away. It dropped, bounced off his shoulder and fell to the floor, revealing curly black, mid-length hair over a receding brow. It was matted with visible droplets of sweat.
‘Call an ambulance,’ Matt shouted again.
A gruff voice shouted back from the dark. ‘Shhhh, we have.’
The man’s lips opened a little. The screen zoomed to show his top and front lower teeth grinding against each other. God. That was the creaking sound he could hear. Like dry rope on an old ship. His teeth might burst into dust at any second.
Freya Ellis stood stock-still through all of this, simply taking in the chaos. Her eyes were methodically drifting between the man in spasm and the frantic floor managers as they guided the panicked crowd towards the exit. She didn’t say a word, and Matt quickly realised why when he saw her head tilt. She was listening to her producer in her earpiece. Would they cut to something else, or would they keep with this?
The latter. This was ITV.
The voice in her ear must have given the word, because she blinked and then erupted into action. The remaining cameras that were trained on Matt and the other guests suddenly span around, every lens in the room swooping towards the muscle man, Richie, whose neck now bulged with many visible pulsing veins. He could have been lifting five hundred pounds right now, but he was just sitting there, one arm lolling by his side, gripping the loose cardigan, and the other crawling across his own body like a hungry fly.
His lips started moving just as that roving hand gripped his own T-shirt. He tore it, and the front collar fell open in a triangular tear. The ripping sound was surprisingly loud, until Matt discovered why. A nervous member of the crew had already rushed up the stairs and was dangling a boom mic over the guy’s head.
Ellis barked out a massive, ‘Quiet, everyone. He’s talking.’
The whole room dropped into an intense, throbbing silence.
A hiss grew on the speakers, and a little whistle of feedback too. Somebody in the gallery was cranking up the mic, and slowly, very slowly, a strained and whispered South African accent started coming through.
‘… walking … walking … I am … walking …’ There were gaps in his speech. Pauses in which the man’s face crunched in pain.
‘I am … roaming … walking … to and fro …’
Freya Ellis frowned at this. Perplexed.
Matt noticed Perry out of the corner of his eye. He was on his feet digging into his inside pocket, like he had a gun in there. But it wasn’t a gun. What he had was just as destructive, though, a tiny New Testament. Matt wondered if this was the same one he’d touched last night, when Tom Riley finally lost control.
He held it forward, aimed at the trapped man across the room. A crucifix to a vampire. ‘Messiah!’ he shouted, wiping his beard of sweat from the spotlights. ‘Christ! Set this man free!’
Instantly, the man jerked his back with a hideous, painful yelp, like he’d just been kicked directly in the spine. It was a shocking, heart-stopping moment, and Matt could well imagine folks at home, spitting out their late-night takeaway. The man’s tongue now pressed out between those lockjaw teeth. Any more of this and he’d bite it clean in two.
Matt had had enough. He ran across the studio floor towards him. ‘Dammit, help him. Support his head—’ A security guard grabbed Matt and shoved him back hard. Matt staggered and ran to Perry instead. ‘Hey.’
‘Satan!’ Perry shouted. ‘Release this man.’
‘Stop. That’s enough.’
‘Satan! Can you hear me?’
‘Enough.’ Matt grabbed Perry’s arm, and the New Testament fell from his fingers. Perry stared at it in cold terror as it dropped through the air in slow motion. As it fell, Richie’s whispers suddenly roared into the speakers, at an ear-splitting level.
‘I am walking to and fro, through the earth, through the soil … I am in the soil, I live in the fucking soil …’ on the screen, in wild, terrible close-up, the man’s eyes and nostrils flared like a horse, and then he screamed, ‘I am in my box, but I am roaming through the earth!’
The picture suddenly flicked to Kissel, who was now much, much closer to the lens. His serene face had filled most of the screen, cheeks now a shadow from the closeness of the camera. When he spoke, it sounded like it was through tears. ‘Leave this wonderful man. Demon, be gone.’
The muscle man roared at this, the type of sound that could split things in his throat, then he burst into a massive, shuddering spasm.
Matt pointed at Kissell on the screen and yelled, ‘Switch him off!’
They didn’t switch Kissell off, because this was clearly too good. A TV first, perhaps. A spontaneous, live exorcism on national TV.
Clearly ignored, Matt threw up his hands, and turned back to Abby still in her chair. He rushed back to her, and said, ‘You okay?’
It was subtle, he supposed.
She was just sitting there, staring at all this chaos in a gaunt, white-faced kind of shock. And to everybody watching, they’d have probably said she was reacting no differently than anybody else. But when Matt dropped next to her, he could see her lips. She kept licking them, and now it wasn’t just her left hand trembling, it was both. Fingers slowly, slowly, curling inwards, like claws.
‘Abby?’ He said her name in a sharp whisper. When she didn’t reply he put a hand on her forearm and shook it, like waking her from a dream. ‘Abby?’
Her head, her trembling head, turned towards him, just as a tear trickled a line down her cheek. ‘Make him stop, Matt.’ Her frightened eyes stared up at Kissell on the screen. ‘Make him stop.’
Matt shouted one more time, only this time he yelled directly at Freya Ellis. ‘That’s enough. Dammit, you’ve got enough.’
Ellis turned to him and, to his surprise, she nodded. She lifted an open-fingered palm high into the air, which must have been the signal to wrap this up. The sound of Kissell’s whispers vanished mid-sentence, as did the whispering from Richie, the muscle man. Perry was the only one still shouting, but a crew member put a firm hand on his shoulder and spoke into his ear. His voice trailed away, and now the only sound left was something horrible. Richie was weeping. Hands went to mouths, as people looked at the sobbing man, alone on the chairs. He’d covered his face with one hand and his shoulders were rocking. Somewhere, in the silence, his voice, no longer low and grating, came through the tears. ‘Why’d you stop?’ he said. ‘It was coming out …’
Matt jumped when Perry grabbed his shoulder.
‘Professor, you had no right …’ he whispered to Matt. ‘You can’t just force your world view on other people. He needed help. He needed this …’ Perry pointed across the room. ‘And look how you’ve left him.’
Richie’s face was now totally covered by both of his hefty hands, and the studio pulsed with the most pitiless and bitter sobbing Matt had ever heard. He felt a confused beat of anger and then a guilty stab of shame. Which became anger again, when Ellis walked into the centre of the studio. She turned to the camera and stood upright.
Holy shit, they were still filming.
She walked towards the lens, slowly, and he saw that her chest was rising and falling with the breath she’d just lost. She raked a rogue strand of fringe back in place, with a trembling hand. He had no idea if any of that was real or fake; he just heard her voice.
‘Ladies and gentleman. As I’m sure you understand, we need to take a short break. I’m told that the ambulance has arrived, and we can assure you that the audience member will be given all the help he needs. We apologise for the bad language, and we will update you just as soon as we can … I’m Freya Ellis, and this … is The Exchange.’
The red light vanished.
There was no boom-ba-boom from the speakers.
Freya Ellis’s long and well-postured body immediately clicked into a sudden stoop, and with a hand in her hair, she drifted on shaky legs towards a growing clan of producers gathered on the floor. Maybe she was scared, after all.
Perry was already at Richie’s side, handing his cap back to him, and holding his hand as the paramedics rushed up with oxygen. Matt and Abby were left on the stage, and when he turned his chair, her chin was trembling, eyes brimming.
‘I’m scared,’ she whispered. ‘I’m really scared.’
‘You’re going to be okay. Let’s just find your son.’
Her face crunched and she nodded, ‘Okay.’
He took her cold and shaking hand in his, and they both walked quickly towards the black curtains. Perry’s voice called out, ‘Bless her, Jesus!’ And for a moment, he felt her slow down.
He squeezed her fingers and tugged her away. Wafting his hand through curtain after curtain, like an eternal maze, impossible to escape from.
When they finally reached the dressing room, Matt pushed through the door and what he saw seemed to perfectly solidify all the stress, frustration and anger he was feeling right now. Foster, that crew member, had not done as Abby had asked. The TVs were still on and there, by the now abandoned Connect 4, sat Tuan, her little boy. He was staring at the screen, jaw lolling open. He slowly turned and looked at his mum, which made her step back. For a moment Matt thought he might screech out in fear and run away from her.
But instead, he immediately slid off his chair and raced towards her. He flung his arms around her legs, then he looked up and laughed. ‘Mummy! Did you see that man just now? What a total, total nutter!’
PART TWO
SEEK
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Matt plunged under, raking the water back so he could skim his chest along the bottom of the pool. He liked doing that. Had done since he first cracked swimming as a kid. Going so low that he felt his belly bounce off the lowest possible tile, then up, up and away, micro bubbles doing a giddy slide across his goggles until he crashed up through the surface, like the mighty, sleek sword of Excalibur (in his mind) or a gasping, flapping, semi-fit fella in Star Fleet swimming shorts (reality). But for the last few years, he always picked something special up on the way.
Amelia was on the surface, lounging back in the water, staring up at the high lights of the vaulted ceiling, until Matt burst up around her, scooping her in an explosion of water and giggles. That’s what always did it. The unexpected timing o
f it. The thought that the Great White was coming, only when? Every time they came swimming she’d requested ‘the Shark game’. Funny how Matt’s passing idea during a toddler swim session should now be a firmly bolted family tradition.
She wriggled out of his arms. Like she always did. He put up a token fight. Like he always did. Then he raced her to the shallow end, like they always did, him swimming with head down and palms up together to make a shark’s fin.
When he finally snapped a shrieking and laughing Amelia, Wren was coming to the end of her lengths too.
‘Nice form there, Wren,’ Matt applauded as she splashed up next to him. Amelia went off to do handstands. He lifted his goggles. ‘Spied a few forbidden angles under the water, too.’
She flicked drops at him but didn’t speak yet. Her chest was heaving. ‘Did you see … that old lady beat me?’
‘You mean the super old one? In the flowery cap?’
She nodded. ‘She’s like two hundred years old, and she’s faster than me. I hate my life.’
‘I bet she’s got webbed toes. And gills too. She’s a mutant, Wren. Don’t envy that.’
She slid a wet arm around his side. ‘You two, done? I need a latte to celebrate.’
‘Celebrate what?’
She shrugged. ‘Giraffes?’
Eventually they climbed out, battling through the predictable stroppiness from Amelia, who would have stayed swimming in there for the rest of the decade if she had her way. Coldness hit him as they trotted a wet trail to their lockers. Shivering, he rummaged for his towel and washbag and found an unoccupied shower. It was while he was in there, while hot water pounded his hair into a bubbled, marshmallow Afro, that someone knocked hard on the door.
‘Just a second,’ Matt called through.
