Experiment in Terror 06.5 And With Madness Comes the Light (12 page)

Once.

My heart shrank. Because she’d lost the
baby. She’d lost it. What was ours. What was love. What was
life.

There was pain and then there was agony.

Hello, agony. I’d been waiting for you.
Finish me off.

Please.

“You didn’t know,” Roman said as he stared
at me, stating the obvious.

I looked away from Perry’s eyes, not wanting
her to see me like this. Ada placed her hand on my shoulder. “Hey,
sorry. I’m sorry.”

I shrugged her hand off, unable to breathe,
unable to think. “I need to get some air.”

“No,” Roman commanded. “You’re not going. We
have to discuss this, all of this. It will help me figure out what
happened. What’s in her.”

“What’s in her?” I glared at him. Wasn’t it
obvious? “A demon, that’s what.”

Roman shook his head. “No. You’re right, but
it’s not just that. There are three entities lying there.” He
pointed over at her. “One is Perry. One is demonic. The other is
another entity. It is weak and it has no power anymore. But it is a
spirit, a vengeful one. And if my guesses are correct, there was
something haunting Perry before. Something that was wronged or
ignored. It made a powerful pact, deal if you will, to gain Perry’s
soul. But was lost before it could even happen.”

He looked to Ada. “And this miscarriage.
Perry would have been at her lowest, most vulnerable. It’s times
like that, or pregnancy, when something foreign can grow and latch
on with the baby. Even if the baby was eventually lost. Though you
can bet it was because of this spirit.”

At the mention of
baby
, my lungs felt
kicked. I turned through the smoky haze and leaned against the
wall, trying to keep myself from disintegrating right there and
then. Perry had been pregnant and it was ripped from her. Just the
right time for someone else to move on in. And I knew who it was. I
should have known all this time.

“It was Abby,” I said, choking on my words.
Roman appeared beside me, puzzled.

I explained, “She was haunting me when Perry
was with me in Seattle. She’s an ex...she died. Years ago. But she
comes around every now and then. You know, she died because of me.
And I don’t think she’ll ever forget it.”

Abby. As if this couldn’t be more of my
fault. I got Perry pregnant, I hurt her deeply, then my dead
ex-girlfriend decided she wasn’t done. When I was younger and at
the mercy of my mother, hiding from her while she searched for me
in a drunken rage, I often wished I was someone else. And when she
died—at my own hands—I thought Declan Foray O’Shea was the biggest
waste of space that this planet had ever seen. But now…now I wished
I hadn’t been born at all. It would have saved us all a lot of
trouble.

“She will now,” Roman said, his voice hard.
“The demon gained access to Perry through her, played on her fears
through her. To get to you. This spirit is no more. Demons don’t
keep their bargains.”

I shook my head. “So that’s it. It has one
ex-girlfriend of mine. And it’s not satisfied. It wants the only
person left on this earth that I...that I’d do
anything
for.
Just throw her into the pot, who cares. I lost her once, I cannot
lose her again.”

“Life is unfair for a lot of people and for
a lot of reasons,” Bird spoke up quietly. “This isn’t about you
Dex, though I know from experience your intentions are good. This
is about Perry. This is about what we can do to help her. We can’t
waste time placing blame on each other or being angry. That’s what
it wants. We need to help her. And we need to hurry. You can deal
with everything else afterward.”

It was hard to listen. It was hard to know
that Bird was right. That it wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about my
feelings, my guilt, my problems, my shame. It was about Perry. I
was here to save her, or die trying. And I wasn’t dead yet.

I turned around and faced the room, not
caring if they saw the tears in my eyes. I only cared about one
thing. Make that two things.

I walked over to Ada and stuck out my hand.
“I’m extremely, unrelentingly sorry for what I did to your sister.
To Perry. And, by default, to you. Little Fifteen.”

Ada looked at my hand like it was covered in
herpes. Then she gave me a small smile and shook my hand. It gave
me strength.

“Good,” Roman said, looking us over. “We
need a united front against this. Even with Bird acting as my
helper, I will need you both to be strong and to have no fear. You
have to believe that we can beat it. We are superior to this beast
and we will get it out. But you must have conviction in your
beliefs. To doubt is to endanger all of our lives, and especially
Perry’s.”

Bird began to drum lightly while Roman
brought up a small wooden bowl from the floor. He took it over to
Perry, his eyes ruthlessly cutting into her, looking for the
monster underneath.

“And so we begin the sacred ceremony,” he
announced. “An exorcism is a battle. I will lead it until the
end.”

He raised up the bowl and started yelling in
his native tongue, short and sharp words that seemed to sink into
you like rain, tangible and real.

Perry immediately reacted. She began
writhing back and forth underneath the straps, panting hard like a
wild beast. Motherfucking steam rose from her body, giving me the
chills. What the shit was happening?

Roman was relentless. He was fueled by the
beast’s misery, by Perry’s agonizing reaction. It was hard to watch
but I couldn’t look away, no matter how hard I tried. The floor,
Ada’s tortured face, Bird’s steady drumming; I kept being drawn
back to Perry, like she wanted me to watch. Like it helped in some
way.

Roman paused and dipped his thumbs into the
wooden bowl until they were blackened with soot, then approached
her. She flung her head back and forth, trying to escape his hands
but he succeeded in getting one swipe down her cheek.

Then she bit him on the hand.

I cried out as the blood ran down her chin.
I couldn’t help it. To say I was horrified was an
understatement

But I wasn’t the one doing the exorcist.
Roman didn’t seem to feel any terror. He jabbed an ink-black thumb
straight into Perry’s forehead and her head flew back from the
force, letting go of his hand, which he calmly took back.

The monster smiled, bloody teeth, bloody
lips, bloody gums. Perry was completely gone. And as if it needed
to hammer that point right on home, it spoke through her, in a
voice that I’d never forget. A voice straight out of the earth,
omnipresent and overpowering.

“Think she’ll be so lucky this time? After
what you did to little Jim?”

It was loud and malevolent. I was sure the
ground was going to open up beneath us and we would fall into the
fiery pits of hell. This couldn’t be real. After everything I had
seen so far, even in the last twenty-four hours, it still couldn’t
be real.

But it was.

And Roman, bless his crazy ass soul, he was
not phased. He kept repeating his words, his voice becoming
stronger, clearer. She started screaming and banging the back of
her head against the mattress, making Linda Blair’s performance in
The Exorcist
look like a mere temper tantrum.

Everything got louder, so damn intense.
Perry was covered in sweat and started to slide out from under the
straps.

“Dex, Ada!” Roman yelled. “Get a hold of her
legs.”

We both rushed forward ready to hold her
down but the moment our hands touched her skin, it was like we were
grabbing a hot iron.

We quickly let go, my hand inflamed and red.
She was a hundred degrees.

“She’s burning hot!” I cried out. “You’re
killing her!”

“Do it!” Roman yelled. And maybe the power
of Christ compelled me or something, but I went back. I grabbed her
leg, holding her down, wincing through the pain as my skin singed
from the contact.

“United front, Dex,” Roman said through
gritted teeth. “You can’t let your feelings get in the way. We must
do this. You too, Ada.”

Ada sniffled in response, obeying him
through her tears. It was killing her inside to do this to Perry,
as much as it was killing any of us.

And the monster inside Perry wasn’t done
with us yet.

“You killed him. The mother killed herself
shortly after. You ruined a town,” the monster seethed out through
Perry. “You’ll ruin her. I will ruin her. You are powerless,
foolish and weak.”

She burst into haunting laughter that tore
through me, seeming to come from the walls, the floor, the air. She
was everywhere.

“You can do what you want to her,” Roman
said forcefully, “but I am stronger and I will win this battle. I
will get you out and send you back to where you came from.”

Oh shit, I hoped Roman was confident enough
in his abilities, because it felt like my fingers were melding in
with Perry’s skin. I felt like time wasn’t on our side anymore and
this was only going to get worse.

Suddenly the area around the bed erupted in
flames that rose from the floor in a thick line, nearly engulfing
us. Ada and I stumbled back, running from the fire. Even Bird
stopped drumming, stunned by what was happening.

“Keep going!” Roman screamed at Bird over
the roar of the flames.

Bird snapped to it and continued, his hands
slapping steadily on the drum.

The flames grew higher until they provided a
barricade between us and Perry. I held Ada tight to my side as she
trembled, both of us now a captive audience.

In one swift, violent motion, Perry sat
straight up, breaking the straps around her arms. She grinned at
Roman and in a most disturbing voice of a little boy, “Why did you
have to be so rough? You hurt me. You broke my bones.”

“No!” Roman yelled, and then bellowed a
string of harsh-sounding native words.

“Yes, you did,” the voice continued,
teasingly, like a child on the playground. “You broke me in a
million pieces. You told me you had to hurt me to free me.”

Roman kept reciting his mantra over and over
again, watching Perry like his eyes were glued to her, never
breaking, never faltering.

“And you,” she said, turning her head to
look at me.

“Let’s not forget what you did, Declan.”

But it wasn’t her who spoke. It was my
mother’s voice.

She
was here.

My arm came off of Ada and I was afraid I
was going to die of fright right there.

Perry—my
mother
—laughed, so familiar,
so terrible. “Your little secret. You don’t want anyone to know
about what happened to your dear old mother. I’m in here now. In
here with your little tramp. And I will do to her what you did to
me.”

No.

She would not expose my secret. She would
not
take my Perry.

Suddenly the rest of the straps broke in two
and she went flying backward as if booted by an invisible force,
her head smacking the wall with a sickening crack.

Next thing I knew there I was screaming and
burning alive. I’d tried to run through the fire, to get to her, to
save her from my mother but I couldn’t make it. The flames engulfed
me, swallowing me from head to toe. I was sure I was a goner but
someone pulled me back and shoved me to the ground where I rolled.
Through all of this I could hear Perry’s head being thrown against
the wall.

“Dex!” Roman yelled above the noise. “It’s
testing you, don’t listen to it. It wants your fear, it feeds on
it!”

Then it must have been having the feast of a
lifetime. I shrugged off my jacket, which was somehow only lightly
singed, and Ada helped me to my feet. Her attention was elsewhere
though. Everyone’s was.

Perry was now floating right above us, her
back on the ceiling, staring down at us as the flames roared around
the bed. She laughed and laughed and laughed and we were at her
mercy.

“I will do to her what you did to me,” and
this time, it was Abby’s voice that came out.

She was back. She was going to take Perry
somewhere far away. Somewhere to feast on her soul. Perry’s
beautiful, precious soul. And she’d kill her body in the process.
She’d leave behind no trace of the girl I knew and loved. Oh god, I
loved her.

This wasn’t what I came here to do. I came
here to save her. And if it wasn’t Roman who could do it, it had to
be me. The world was better for having her soul in it.

I looked Roman in the eyes and yelled at
him, “Take me! Let it take me. It needs a soul, it can have
mine!”

But the bastard ignored me and shook his
head. “I can win this battle.”

“No, you can’t,” the monster replied through
Perry’s lips. “You can’t win. I’ll kill her before you even get a
chance. Then I’ll take him.”

It smiled sweetly at me.

And then she fell.

CHAPTER NINE

The minute she hit the ground, I was sure
she was dead. But she immediately started moving, just tossing and
turning on the ground like she was having a seizure. There was no
demon in sight but there was no Perry either.

“What’s happening?” Ada cried as Bird and
Roman tried to hold her still, Bird cupping her face and head as
gently as he could. I fell to my knees and tried to touch her, but
she writhed away from under my fingers.

“I don’t know,” Roman said. Not the words I
wanted to hear. But before I could do or say anything, Perry was
suddenly ripped from their hands. She zoomed to the center of the
room where she floated, suspended in the air, lifeless except for
an ultraviolet light that shone out from her center, like she was
some god awful sun.

We watched her, frozen on the spot. She just
hung there in the air and when Roman went to go touch her, he was
mildly shocked by some kind of energy.

He licked his lips nervously. “She’s in
another place.”