Experiment in Terror 05 On Demon Wings (23 page)

“Then your ginger boy better know how to do a quick

cleansing…” she said wryly.

I had a feeling that he wasn’t sure how to even do a

cleansing in general. Oh wel , there was no point in dwel ing

on it. We were al green when it came to this side of things

and had no choice but to wing it.

At 6:30 Maximus came rol ing into the driveway in his

snazzy truck, coming up to the front door armed with a

dozen bags. The scratches on his face were somehow

uglier and clotted black red.

“Do we need al this stuff?” I asked as I opened the door

and welcomed him in.

“Unfortunately,” he said, and stooped down to give me a

quick peck on the cheek. He looked behind me at Ada,

who was giving him the staredown.

“Ew, what happened to your face!” she said.

He smiled and stroked his cheek fondly. “Wildcat.”

I blushed, then shot her a look of my own, internal y

warning her to behave, and a wave of resignation flooded

her face.

“Oh. Wel , we’re glad you could make it,” she said with

reluctance.

“Why thank you, blondie,” he said. He held out one of the

bags for her.

“You can be in charge of the cleansing material.”

She took it hesitantly and peeked inside while he turned

to me. “Do you have the Witch Bottle? Have you created a

permanent home for it yet?”

“Say what?” Ada said, but I understood what he was

asking. I quickly ran up the stairs to my room to fetch the

bottle from my nightstand. As he had asked, it was a glass

bottle and the hair from my family members’ heads, plus

mine and Ada’s nail clippings were resting at the bottom. It

looked like a gruesome rat’s nest of black and blonde hair.

I brought it back down to the kitchen where they now

were, lifting items out of the bags and spreading it out on

the island countertop.

“Here you go,” I said, handing it to him. We al winced at

the bottle in unison.

“Lovely,” he said. “And the home?”

I told him I dug a hole in the back yard where we could

bury it and no one would be the wiser, unless my parents

decided to put in an in-ground pool one day.

“Yeah right, a pool. Dad’s salary ain’t what it used to be,”

Ada said under her breath.

Nothing’s as it used to be
, I thought.

We looked out at everything displayed before us. There

was a smal brass bel , the Witch Bottle, two unmarked

glass vials fil ed with clear liquid (which I assumed was holy

water), a box of salt, two smal bowls, packets of red and

saffron-colored spices, a smal bottle of crimson oil and a

black candle and a white candle.

“You’re going to do some show and tel with us first,

right?” I asked.

Maximus smiled and walked over to the broom closet.

He emerged with a broom, which he handed to me, and a

mop, which he handed to Ada.

“I wil . But first we have to clean the house from top to

bottom.”

“Perry! You promised me there wouldn’t be any manual

labor!” Ada cried out, staring down at the mop in horror.

“I didn’t know!” I shot back and looked at Maximus for an

explanation.

“We have to make sure al the affected areas are clean

before we do this,” he said calmly. “Dust and dirt hold a lot

of negative energy.”

“Oh, please,” Ada said.

“Hey, I don’t make the rules,” Maximus said, raising his

hands in mock surrender. “And I’m not getting off any easier

either. I’l be dusting.”

I eyed the clock. We were going to have to clean in a

hurry.

We started with the first floor before we made our way

through the house together with Maximus dusting hard-to-

reach areas, fol owed by me with a broom and a garbage

bag and Ada with the mop and a bucket. Our house wasn’t

a mansion by any means, but it was quite large and there

were an awful lot of nooks and crannies. It took almost an

hour for us to do the whole house. My parents were

definitely going to think something was up when they came

back to a sparkling clean home, but I was hoping that by

then it wouldn’t matter what we told them – our problems

would be over.

When we finished, we gathered back in the kitchen,

which Maximus deemed as the heart of the home (and

probably why the pig carcass was original y hidden there).

He organized al of our special items on top of my mother’s

navy blue dish cloth so it resembled an Ikea altar of sorts.

Then he brought out a pair of nail clippers and smal

scissors from the front pocket of his black shirt, clipped his

nails, had me snip a smal chunk of hair from the back of his

pompadour do, then he stuck it in the bottle with the rest of

our offerings and deftly sealed it with duct tape.

“Now,” he said, lifting up the container of salt, “we purify.”

He walked out of the kitchen and to the front door. Ada

and I fol owed him, staying a few feet back, unsure of what

he was going to do.

He stooped down and shook a thick line of salt across

the path of the door.

“Purifying salt,” he said in a loud, booming voice that

seemed to echo off the ceiling and wal s, “al ow positive

energy in and negative energy out. Al ow al unwanted

energy and entities to leave this house, never to return.”

Part of me wanted to laugh because what he was saying

was just so Harry Potter/hocus pocus that it sounded

ridiculous. The other part of me felt a tug of trepidation, like

there was actual power in the words.

Ada moved an inch closer to me. Evidently, she felt it

too.

He got up and smiled faintly at us. “Now we go around

the house, clockwise, and do the same at every door that

leads outside.”

Ada and I exchanged looks but we walked down the hal

to the French doors at the back patio. When we finished

with that door, we went to the one at the garage and

Maximus repeated himself.

“I’m glad you didn’t use our salt,” I whispered, feeling like

my voice should be kept to a minimum. “My mother would

have wondered what I was cooking.”

“She’d probably think you accidently used salt for sugar,

like that pie you made,” Ada snickered and I joined in,

embarrassed at one of my first attempts at baking.

“Ladies,” Maximus said sharply. We looked at him in

surprise. I’d never heard him take that tone before and it

shut both of us up. “My apologies, but you’re going to have

to start taking this seriously. Perry? This means you. This is

your ghost. If you aren’t one hundred percent committed

and believing in this, then we’re just wasting our time. Or

worse.”

I looked helplessly at Ada, then at the floor, chagrined.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

He placed his hand on my shoulder and gave it a

squeeze. His face was stil stern, his mouth set in a hard

line, but he nodded. “It’s al right. But I mean it. Now, time for

the holy water.”

Back at the kitchen, with me feeling like I had my tail

between my legs, he picked up a vial of the holy water and

in a clockwise direction again, we went to every single

window in the house.

He flicked the water on them, the drops sticking and

glimmering in the lights of the room, and asked Ada and

me to imagine ourselves forcing negative air and energy

out of the house, the salt and water combining to form an

invisible shield.

We returned to the kitchen and Maximus loudly

proclaimed, “I come this night to cleanse this home. This

home belongs to the Palominos and negative energy and

entities are unwelcome here. They want you to leave. You

shall
leave!”

The house was silent. Deathly, sickly silent. I was holding

my breath and it looked like Ada was too from the way her

face was losing color. We were too afraid to move.

Maximus was also stil , his eyes searching the air around

us.

Final y, I had to whisper, “Was that it?”

“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “I just thought

something would have happened. We now have to go

around again and sprinkle the water in every single corner

of the house.”

Ada let out the breath she was holding and whined,

“Again? I’m getting tired.”

I elbowed her. “Suck it up.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever examined every corner of your

place, but there are a lot more corners than you’d think. And

we had to go everywhere, even the bathrooms and the icky,

spider-webbed crawlspace under the stairs. Together we

chanted, “As we cleanse this space, negativity leave this

place.” It slowly went from feeling like a childish rhyme to

something much more powerful. I could actual y
feel
it. This

push and pul in the air around me, like good and evil were

having a tug-of-war and I was their prize.

When it was al over we were back in the kitchen and

Maximus was raising the Witch Bottle high in the air. With

the overhead light fixture il uminating his flaming hair and

submissive posturing, it looked like he was offering the

bottle to the gods. In a way, he was.

He declared al negative entities to be drawn to the

bottle, where they would remain forever trapped, unable to

do any harm.

Once finished, and having ended his speech with “As I

wil , so mote it be!” it was my turn. I picked up the bel and

began to ring it from my fingertips. It was a light, pleasing

noise, not at al like the malevolent clanging I had heard in

my dream the other night.

I kept it ringing continuously as we went through the

house yet again and through ragged, tired breath, I kept

repeating, “As the sound of this bel rings through the

house, let it be fil ed with light. Evil and darkness be

banished, may goodness and light return,” as we went into

every single room once more. It sounds sil y and

unbelievable but each room did grow a bit lighter, like the

bulbs were suddenly swiped clean of al obstructing grime

and dust.

After every room was cleared, we came back to the

kitchen, where Maximus said his final words.

He looked at us in the eyes, then around him at the wal s,

his steady expression of determination never changing.

“This house has been cleansed and purified. Negativity is

banished. Light and goodness fil this place. This house is

now a
home
.”

Then we walked out of the house through the back door,

careful not to disturb the trail of salt across the threshold,

and went into the darkness of the back yard to bury the

Witch Bottle. I knelt on the cold grass before the smal hole I

had dug earlier with a spoon, which stil lay beside it. I

picked this spot, near the back of the yard, because it

wasn’t as attended by my mother’s black thumb or my

father’s lawnmower on the weekends. It was rocky and

patchy and no one would ever suspect that something was

buried beneath it. Not something that supposedly contained

al the negative energy the house had ever seen. With me

growing up there, I could tel you that was a lot.

“Maybe I should have dug a deeper hole,” I said, worried

now that it wouldn’t be enough.

Maximus handed me the bottle, which was cool and

throbbing strangely in my hands. “It wil do.”

“I hope so.” I careful y placed the bottle in its shal ow

grave and looked up at Maximus and Ada for approval. The

motion sensor light from the house was il uminating their

backs and they towered over me like faceless beings. A

frigid breeze mussed up their hair, causing the strands to

float delicately around their heads like glowing silk threads.

With my hands I piled the frosty dirt and grass and rocks

on top until it was fil ed and level and patted it down with my

hands, pressing harder and harder, like the force of my

hands would keep it buried for eternity.

“Careful, don’t break it,” Maximus warned.

I looked up to give him an agreeable smile when a

movement at the French doors behind him made me

pause.

I could barely see what it was because the harsh glare of

the patio lights created a reflective quality to the glass. But

against the light from the inner hal way, I saw a very large,

wide silhouette, just standing there. It was at least eight feet

tal and built larger than Maximus.

There was no detail to the black mass except for a pair

of burning red eyes near the top. They flickered like the