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Never before have I held a knife to kill a
human being – I put it away immediately. It slips from my
moist fingers to the kitchen tiles, a clatter so loud that
matching the little shriek that escapes my breast. Hands
shaking uncontrollably, they cover my contorted face. I bite
into naked skin, struggling to keep quiet, and blood
trickles along the side of my mouth. I gnaw deeper, more
furiously, soon a bloody mass left of my palm. I run for the
bathroom and cough it all up into the toilet.
Flesh and blood and vomit, and then scented toilet paper
seeped with it all flushes down in swirls. I throw up again
and again, choking and gasping for breath while trying to
keep my tongue out of my own throat, watching clumps of my
hair sink into the filthy lavatory water and unable to close
bulging eyes.
When I am calm again, I begin to clean up after myself. I
tend to the wound on my hand, dispassionately pouring
peroxide, feeling only little twinges of pain. It will hurt
later, I know, but for now I am numb in body and mind. I do
not react to the revolting sight, but bandage it carefully
in the stupor – raw meat shows. I wash my face and hair,
take a shower, brush my teeth, brush them again and then
proceed to wipe of all the bloodstains from the bathrooms
walls and floor, towels and rugs. But they’re everywhere and
I give up, a disgusting metallic aftertaste on my tongue. I
can still touch the occasional mushy bit between my teeth.
I
moan quietly.
A
dull throb pulsates through my arm to my hand, increasing
with every passing second; the other is clenched and I am
shuddering violently, my stomach churning. I breathe in and
out, but the air is putrid, rotting – because I wanted to
kill, because I ate away my hand and briefly found peace in
the pain of it. A sob slithers out of my aching throat, dry
as I have no more tears left.
I
clean the kitchen. Change clothes again. Throw away the ones
soaked up in blood along with the plastic bag from the
bathroom and take another shower, feeling filthy despite
scorching water. Change my bandage, because that too is
seeping red, and cry out softly as it hurts so horribly and
I find no comfort in it.
And when I’m done, when everything is clean and no visible
trace of what happened is left, I quietly pick up the
kitchen knife and put it back into the cupboard. I stand
still for a long time after, eyes half-closed and locked on
the closed little doors of that cabinet. My hands no longer
shake, my chin does not tremble anymore. I let out a long,
hissing breath.
I
enter my father’s bedroom.
He’s sleeping. He slept through it all, through a shadow of
his own death.
***
Aram Larens is his name, he’s an exorcist and never there.
Neither he nor his fifteen year old daughter, who’s the same
– we’re always on the run, always moving, always hiding.
Never in the same place for more than a few months.
“The monsters would catch us, Lissie,” he’d explain when I
was smaller, before he stopped speaking to anyone at all. I
never asked which ones. I knew – we knew, only him and me.
Feeding on smuts on souls, on blood. Sometimes crawling
behind, sometimes upright within the soul when bloated:
following, forever following and preying on humans. Little
demonic entities escaped from the seams of hell.
“Are we bad, too? Are we from hell?”
Mother thought so. Right before she finally hanged herself
in the bathroom with her favorite bright pink sweater: “You
kill and kill and kill – Aram, I can’t take it anymore, do
you understand? I can’t take it anymore. You’re endangering
her and me - and she’s just like you.” She sobs, he’s quiet
and says nothing, and I’m taking short, shaky breaths with
my ear pressed to the door. “She’s just like you, I can’t
take it anymore-”
Pink material knotted around her slender little throat. He
kills and kills and kills the demons, and the hosts usually
die without them later on; and I’m exactly like him.
***
Aram Larens wakes up at dusk, smells remnants of dried blood
in the hallway and acknowledges my bandage with a cold, dead
look he always wears. They stop there, don’t slide away, and
I freeze, can’t move. Then he looks at my face. He says
nothing – he never does. Never speaks to anyone alive, never
smiles, never laughs. Only kills.
Bile in my throat.
I
want to ask if he’ll kill me. I want to ask: ‘Will you kill
me, Aram?’ But my voice is gone, and I can’t utter a thing.
So I just stand there and feel dirty, so dirty. Clenched
teeth, frozen features, my own eyes as icy as his. They’ve
seen too much, his and mine.
I
never ask my question, but I wonder. I wonder if inside, he
feels anything at all – whether he blames himself for
leaving me with Mary Weaver, would he miss me if he killed
me. Would he be able to do it, when I wasn’t, not even to
survive.
He leaves the house.
***
It had been little girl’s demon, the one that Aram left for
me in the basement, chained by her wrists and ankles. Her
name was Mary Weaver, and I was relieved to find out were
dead, killed by her, making everything so much easier.
Masses of gold locks were glued to her unnaturally pale skin
– wonderful complexion she had, a blush would be like blood
against milk – with blue bruises here and there. There were
those dark, endlessly deep needling holes, too, ones that a
causal observant wouldn’t see. They were burns that ate her
flesh, that reached down to her soul; I knew what they meant
– the demon was trying to claw its way out of the host.
“Mary, everything will be just fine,” I said coaxingly,
turning off the lights and reaching out to touch her
forehead. She flinched visibly and tried to avoid my hand,
shrinking against the wall. Then, for a second, the girl’s
eyes changed. For a moment, for just one moment, they were
blue again, color surfacing, and it was Mary Weaver I saw, a
nine year old, terrified out of hers senses girl.
“I killed them,” she whispered, looking around wildly. Her
eyes widened and she stared and stared at me, making choking
sounds, and her lips trembled. She rattled at her chains,
and opened and closed her mouth, and-
Mary let out a shrill scream as I unsheathed the first knife
and slashed at her palm, letting a dark crimson, sticky
liquid seeping down; the hand was conveniently shackled just
above her head. Her lips, now blue, parted, and the metal
groaned as she tried to pull free with inhuman strength.
But she was human, and I couldn’t forget that as the pool of
red at our feet spread out, as the blood was soaked in her
navy blue shirt and jeans, and as it circled my heels. Drip,
drip, drip.
And her screams. She felt it, the pain, and the demon, safe
inside her, didn’t. Mary Weaver whimpered. She howled, too,
while she could, but as time passed by, there was no sound
left in her. Her breathing became shallow, ragged, and her
hand was a bloody heap.
The sticky blood oozed down to the floor, and scraps of skin
fell, too. It was a characteristic sound, barely audible yet
so familiar to me. I knew that if the lights were on, I’d
see those chunks, floating in the liquid. I’d see the
vapors, not only feel their heaviness, smell their
sickly-sweetness. That was why I liked it to be dark when I
did my work. I relied on my instincts enough not do need
light to know where to aim with the daggers.
I
worked, skinning her hand, with the girl all the time
conscious and aware. Tied, she couldn’t move, couldn’t do a
thing, just scream, with the being in her watching,
observing me through her eyes. It was the demon that made
her stay awake, open her eyes and feel the pain, but it was
her body that he used. His role was minimal. He was just
there. He might be whispering something to her in her head,
or might be just waiting. He was just there, and he watched.
I
worked, crooning all the way through, saying, “Everything
will be good, Mary, everything will be fine.” It was more
for myself that her.
To the concept of skinning, if not sight, I was used to, but
to the smell I would never be. It was rotting flesh that I
had to discard on the pile next to the girl, putrid, putrid
flesh. I fought nausea, knowing that I had to get to the
bones of her right hand. On it would be scribbled, burned,
the information I would need to banish the demon.
I
cut, swallowing hard. Mary’s demon had escaped hell, and
chosen her to inhabit. Mary’s lips were parted, and she
barely breathed. Her skin was no longer pale; it was grey,
tinted with yellow, but most of all it was sweaty and
bloody, and wet in touch. I had no contact with the demon,
other than the glimpses through her eyes, but soon that
would change.
Soon the girl would have no right hand, just the skeleton of
it. Soon I would be able to stand up, perhaps throw up in
some corner, cry a little, and the drag myself to the basin
that Aram had left for me. I’d then carry the basin to the
girl, I’d see her thrash about as the demon, probably for
the first time, started worrying. I’d sink the bones into
the water, perhaps take a deep breath, one that’d I’d later
rather I hadn’t, and wipe the remains of the hand dry. I’d
read the single word, etched many times on the bones of her
fingers and palms, starting from the wrist. The spells on my
daggers would save her from death of blood loss, sealing the
cut through arteries shut even as I slashed at the veins.
I’d read silently the inscription. I’d mouth, at first, but
then force myself to say it aloud: Lefrimel. I’d watch the
demon push through Mary’s skin, a ghostly, transparent
being, watch it speed with full force at me. Perhaps I’d
even see the girl go limp, loose consciousness, but I’d not
have enough time to savor the sudden silence, the lack of
the girl’s screeches in my head. It’d – Lefrimel, because
that would be his name – leave Mary Weaver, yes, but go at
me instead.
And I’d have to chant formulae instead of defending myself.
I’d have to whisper at it weakly, order it to go back to
hell in barely audible tones, knowing that if I failed, he’d
do to me what I’d done to the girl. The demon would attempt
to split me into half, tear my flesh into shreds and crush
my bones. And it could, if it only it got to me before I
managed to banish it.
***
Aram returns in the morning – doorknob turning slowly,
slowly. A floorboard creaks. I let out a small gasp when the
blade enters my flesh, slips through my ribs. Stare at the
ceiling as my vision blurs and see nothing, not even his
eyes. Dead, dead, it’s me who is dead. Everything
disappears, dissolves. Everything – Mary, and her skin and
blood and bones – everything but Aram Larens, who appears
out of nothingness, out of the sudden darkness. He stands
somewhere below, my father, surrounded by a golden glow, and
I watched him from up above, consumed in the shadows.
No. No!
My lips part. I want to say that I know I would be like Mary
Weaver, but that I wanted to live. But nothing came out.
Instead, I start trembling, shaking, my eyes widen, and I
whirl around only to face blackness. Aram’s glow flickers,
diminishing, and he himself begins to distort. I notice that
something lay at his feet, and make myself concentrate on
it. It’s a corpse; it’s my corpse. It’s torn, ripped, and
its blue eyes are wide open. Beside it, smoking, is a
smaller shadow – a twisted hairless body with a mouth taking
half of its shrunken head, filled with sharp, sharp teeth.
I
resist the darkness, and even though the light burns me, I
reach out to touch her – my – cheek. But Aram’s hand catches
my unsubstantial arm before I can do so, and my father
shakes his head. The darkness starts to pulls me away from
him and my dead body.
I
claw at him. I want to stay, not go; I want to the light,
not darkness. I want to be alive, not dead, and so I attack
him. I tear at his flesh, leaving marks on his face and
arms; I make him bleed. Desperately, I clutch the hems of
his clothing, willing myself to stay, willing him to take me
back with him. I hang on, not wanting to let go. He shakes
his head again.
Don’t. Don’t do this to me!
Aram Larens frees himself from me, stepping back into the
lightness, and my grasp lessens, until at last I hold on to
only emptiness. The light turns into fire, and the flames
push me back into the darkness, to a brightness that lay
hidden, poking out behind. Circles blaze at his feet, and
the runes etched inside burn. I stare at him, pleading, but
he shakes his head again.
“Elisabeth Anne Larens, you will rest in peace.” |
