Authors: Danielle DeVor
“Jesus Christ!” I jumped.
Then the DVD went back to normal and showed Tabby and I finished up and Lucy and our last exchange.
“That was … disturbing,” Tabby said.
I took a deep breath. “I think we all better sleep in the library tonight.”
Tabby turned to look at me. “That’s probably a good idea.”
###
We all hunkered down in the library with the lights on after that. It just wasn’t safe enough for us all to sleep in different parts of the house whether I needed a break or not. It was hard to get that image of Lucy smiling at the camera out of my head. It honestly scared the shit out of me.
Tabby and I kept our sofas. Tor took over a sofa that was placed in front of the windows and Will deposited himself in a chair he moved from the other side of the room.
“I think we should take bathroom breaks together,” Tabby said.
“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “A lot cleaner than my idea.”
“And what was that,” Will asked.
I grinned at him. “A really big bucket.”
Tabby hit me with her pillow. “You know, honestly, we should try to all use the bathroom early. Then there will be no one out of this room late tonight.”
“When’s the latest we can go?” Tor asked.
I scratched my head. “To be safe, I’d say ten. And we can bring a bucket in here for emergencies. Stuff tends to happen around three, and Tabby and I can attest that the stuff isn’t good.”
“Okay, next time we go out we’ll get a bucket and some toilet paper,” Will said. “What about water?”
“Not a bad idea either,” I said. “Some snacks too, just in case someone gets the nervous munchies.”
Everyone was quiet then. I looked at them all. They were trying so hard not to show that they were afraid, but I could still see it. Each time the house settled, the level of fear rose with it.
Me, I didn’t care about the house. Unless the house decided to fall on me, it was pretty damn harmless. Lucy-demon-thing, however, was not.
I did my best to not freak out. There was enough fear in this room and there was no need to make things worse. Demons feed on fear, and I had a feeling that with what happened with Lucy earlier, and the amount of fear hanging around the room, we were in for a Hell of a night.
Tor laughed suddenly. “Is it wrong to be scared of my own daughter?”
“No, not wrong,” Tabby said. “There are plenty of parents who are afraid of their kids, most though, just have severe behavioral problems. I think with having a possessed child, you have the right to be afraid.”
“Try to keep calm,” I said. “Demons feed on fear, and the more you aggravate yourself, the stronger you are making it.”
“What are you telling me, Jimmy?” Tor asked.
“I’m telling you that if you can, don’t think about your daughter tonight. Everyone needs to stay calm and I want us all to stay in this room. I don’t care what noise Lucy makes. The only reason to leave this room is if the alarm on one of her monitors goes off—anything else, do not listen. It is very tricky, this demon.”
“When do you really think we should get everything?” Will asked.
“Before the noises start.”
Tabby stood up. “Should we just go now? We can deal with the pee smell if need be.”
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
###
All of us left the library. We followed Tor out to the garage. I grabbed a bucket. Tabby grabbed the large pack of toilet paper Tor pointed out. Will grabbed a case of water. Then, we went back into the house. We all took turns using the bathroom.
When it was Will’s turn, I approached the bathroom door. “Don’t forget number two,” I whispered to Will through the door.
“Shut up,” he said from the bathroom.
Tabby, Tor and I had to fight not to giggle. Finally, giggling aside, we all made our bathroom visits. While things were about as serious as they could get, I felt we needed a little comic relief. A bathroom break was something safe to joke about, anything else, I wasn’t sure. As we walked back towards the library, I ran down the hall to the kitchen and grabbed Tor’s cell phone from the counter. We all made it back into the library without incident.
I felt unsettled though. The hair on the back of my neck was raised. Something big was going to happen. It made me wonder if I ever wanted to try to go to sleep again.
“Jimmy?” Tabby asked.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think we are being too cautious? I feel kind of silly now.”
I shook my head. “We know what we’ve seen at night. In particular, we know what we’ve experienced since you put the wards on this room. There was no way we could leave Tor and Will anywhere else in this house, Tabby. This has gotten a lot more dangerous. Don’t feel silly. This is the right thing to do.”
Tabby sighed. Tor and Will looked at me gratefully. What I wanted to know was how I became the leader? Who the Hell was going to comfort me when I got scared?
###
Just as I expected, along about three it began. Tabby, Tor and Will had settled into an uneasy slumber. I stayed awake. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t explain it. I could just feel it in my gut that something was going to happen.
Then the pounding began. It started out softly, but gradually grew louder and louder until I could see something was trying to break Tabby’s wards. It was invisible, but each time it assaulted the wards, the wards glowed brighter. At times, they seemed to stretch, almost as if they were about to break. Then, the pounding stopped. I looked around. Tor and Will had their blankets tucked underneath their chins. Tabby was sitting up on her sofa. Like me, she was getting used to this.
Then, I heard a little girl’s giggle. I looked at Tor. Tor threw off the blanket.
“Stay still.” I told her.
The giggle happened again.
She stood up. “If Lucy’s okay…”
“Lucy is not okay,” I snapped. “This thing plays tricks. It tries anything to get you to leave the confines of this room.”
The pounding started again, more vigorously than before. This time, when it stopped, there was a figure in the doorway of the library—a figure of a little girl with pretty golden hair.
“Mommy?” It said hesitantly.
Tor started for the door and we grabbed her. “It’s a trick dammit! Lucy is upstairs in her room chained to her bed. This thing,” I pointed to it. “Is a cruel trick.”
Then the little girl disappeared. Tor whimpered.
“Come out, Mommy. I swear I’ll be good,” the thing said. I could not see it, but I could feel that it was definitely there. It was just hiding itself.
Tor looked at me.
I shook my head, “No.”
“What does it want?” she asked.
I stared at her. Hard. “Your soul, and I don’t think it’s above killing to get what it wants.”
The little girl appeared in the doorway, crying. “You don’t love me anymore, Mommy,” it said.
I kept hold of Tor.
“My baby,” she wailed.
I shook her. “That is not Lucy, Tor. It’s an apparition. It’s fake.”
She struggled and tried to break free of my arms. I looked over at Will. He was frozen in his chair. I rolled my eyes. He should be helping his wife.
“My baby,” Tor cried again.
I shook her again. She was playing on my last nerve. She was such a melodramatic idiot. ”That is not your fucking baby!”
It pressed its head against the film of the wards. It almost looked like her hands were pressed against glass.
“These wards only keep out things that mean harm,” I said. “Why else can all of us move freely, and it can’t come in?”
Suddenly the Lucy thing snarled; its face became an exact replica of the Lucy upstairs.
“You can stay there all night, I don’t care.” She smiled with her broken teeth. “I could always start a fire, you know?”
I laughed. “No you won’t. If you destroy this house, you destroy the connection to that ley line.”
It smiled. “You are too smart for your own good, Priest.”
Then, it disappeared.
“Is everything okay now?” Will asked.
“Hell if I know. Tabby and I have had nights that nothing happened. There have been nights with just noises. Then, there are nights where the beasties come. So, is this all tonight? I don’t know.”
Tor and Will looked at me expectantly.
I stared back at them. “I do not know everything, you know. Tabby knows a lot more than I do about most of this. Why are you looking at me to save you?”
I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. They really had put me on a pedestal, and I didn’t like it. They needed to stand on their own feet once in awhile. Jesus Christ, I felt like I was dealing with a couple of ignorant teenagers and not adults that were supposed to at least be as mature as I was.
“Because you are a priest,” Tor said.
I laughed. “I’m not a priest. I quit, remember?”
Tabby looked at me. “What if God’s rules and the church’s rules are two different things?”
I had no answer to that.
###
The rest of the night, nothing happened. I watched the night fly by staring out the window. It was calm, but it was a normal calm. All I saw through the windows were trees. There was nothing freaky going on outside. Snow covered the ground and ice glinted from the branches of the trees. It looked like a winter wonderland.
Things were so calm now. I kind of expected more. Maybe Lucy knew the real fight was coming? Hopefully, I could get someone here soon. If I couldn’t, I didn’t know how much more we could take. I was exhausted, but sleep wouldn’t come. I couldn’t stop thinking about things, and it was only my brain causing this round of insomnia.
I looked over at Tabby. Her sleep was a comfort to me. I watched her chest gently rise and fall with every breath.
I knew it wasn’t normal. Watching people breathe was odd, but it was something I’d done for as long as I could remember.
Whenever I felt stressed out, watching someone breathe helped relax me. Maybe because breathing was a normal function, and maybe it grounded me because I knew my sister stopped breathing a long time ago.
I missed Candy. She’d been my protector for so many years. She was the one who bandaged my knees when they were bloody, and nursed me when I was sick. I hadn’t felt right since her death. Suicide sucked. I looked back out the window and stared out into the night. No one understood the feeling of loss you get when someone kills themselves. When someone dies, most people assume that it will be the same as when anyone else dies. People are sad for awhile, and then over time, the pain doesn’t hurt anymore. The difference is that when someone commits suicide—they decide to die. They make the honest choice to stop living and the rest of those, those that care about them, are left wondering what they could have done to keep them from killing themselves.
“Jimmy?” Tabby asked. “Are you okay?”
I turned around. Something must have woken her up. I looked at her. “Yeah, why?”
“You’re crying.”