Falter Kingdom (4 page)

I test it again, sticking two fingers under the jet stream. Nope.

It's getting colder in the bathroom too. I can see my breath.

But it's not hard to push it aside, paying it no mind.

I probably wait a few minutes, which seem like forever, and then I try it again. The water isn't as cold this time, which is enough to lean in and try playing with the shower knobs again.

I toss the towel back on the rack.

Yeah, okay, so in the corner of my eye, I saw it.

I saw it from the moment I got in the shower. It was kind of like a shadow, a mass or blotch that you can barely see; but it's also not really either of those things. Behind the shower curtain, I thought of it as just something I made up, something I imagined.

But you see, my towel didn't make it back on the rack. It slipped off and hung in midair, forming a shape that waited for me to see it.

Chilled, you care most about getting warm. Getting warm is, like, the only thing you need when you're fucking freezing.

I'm shivering.

I look at my hands—they're shaking.

I'm really shivering.

This isn't cool.

I have trouble taking it all in. I see it happening but, you know, it's happening and I keep myself out of it. I'm like, “Oh, okay, cold spots now, great.” But I'm not like, “Help me. I'm being haunted.”

It just doesn't come off as totally true.

So then when I'm under the water with my eyes closed, I get a shower going. Not really hot water but not cold either. It feels good enough, and I stand there, letting the water run down my shoulders. I like the way it feels on my penis. I wouldn't ever mention it to anyone, I'm not a pervert, but it really does feel great, the warm temperature just dripping off the tip.

But it doesn't last long. I start to feel the water changing. Going to be cold as hell so I reach for the towel but it isn't there. I feel the air around where it should be and then—

Well, I still don't know how to really explain it. But it got my attention.

Eyes opening, this is what I see: my towel draped over an area of space, forming the shape of a human figure, but that isn't really right either. It looked off. I—I don't know how to explain it. The head was
too small and the shoulders too broad. But it lasts only as long as it takes for me to see it. Then the towel falls and gets drenched in the water, and I'm stuck without a dry towel.

I stand there, in the shower, shivering for a long time.

I'm still not able to get warm.

I keep thinking, “So that's it, huh?”

But it carries its own weight. It isn't as simple as saying that I'll think about it later. I guess seeing it, seeing something that shouldn't be there, kind of changes the way I perceive everything else.

You know how it's never a problem saying you believe in something, but you really don't accept or believe it because it's never anything more than some random concept? That's kind of how this is. I've heard about it since I was a little kid—people being haunted by demons—and about how it's gotten to be so common that there's a whole industry around getting rid of them. But it all comes off as fake.

It doesn't seem real until it's staring right back at you.

And it's watching. It really is.

It's watching me right now.

It's always there, this feeling that I'm not alone.

It gets me thinking about everywhere I'm not looking. If I'm looking straight ahead, is it watching me from behind? If I'm looking everywhere for it, is it everywhere I'm not, watching?

That's the kind of stuff I think about.

And I sort of fixate on this, because it's a problem, a real problem. And I'm—I guess it's fine admitting it now—I'm getting a little worried.

Not afraid. I'm not, I swear.

But something, everything, is starting to feel different. Everything's changing and I'm not sure I understand what that means.

I'm still shivering, damn.

It takes getting under the blankets, napping for, like, an hour—or at least trying to nap—to stop shivering. I want to get online and read about people's experiences with demons, but I can't type. My fingers keep hitting the wrong keys. So yeah, I get under the covers,
keeping the lights on even though it really doesn't matter if they're on or not, I hear the haunting continues no matter what. If it needs to, it'll zap the lights. But it feels, you know, reassuring.

I pull the sheets over my head, just enough so that it's kind of hard to breathe. I don't really sleep though. I just listen to the sound of my breathing, the sound of my voice, but I'm not talking. I'm not saying anything, which takes all the comfort out of being under the covers. I try not to think about anything, but that doesn't really work.

So I make a run for the other side of my room, secure my laptop, making sure it's plugged into a power source, and get back in bed.

Before I really do anything, I get a message.

Becca. I'm actually a little relieved. This takes me away from what's been happening since I got home.

“I'm like so angry at you right now you have no idea.”

I read the message twice before replying, “I have some idea.”

“Then you know that I had to walk home. Walk home.”

“Becca, I'm... sorry?”

“How sincere, ugh.”

Fess up, Hunter. Admit that this isn't going to just go away. And I'm not talking about Becca.

“Look I am sorry, okay? Lots going on. It's crazy.”

Becca types and erases and types. I watch the cursor flicker. I look around the room. I don't see anything wrong, but the feeling is still there. I wish it would just lay off for a little bit—just a little fucking bit.

Becca's reply: “I'm still angry. I want you to know that I'm angry. Things are crazy yeah but that's not an excuse for leaving me at school.”

Either I tell her or I don't. She isn't going away.

“It's not that.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Something happened, okay?”

Becca types, “Oh my god...”

I know she's thinking I got with someone. That's how Becca thinks.

“No. No it's not that.”

“Then WTF are you saying????”

Say it. Just fucking say it.

“I ran the gauntlet the other day and...”

“No...”

“And yeah. Things have been happening.”

“You”—Becca's cursor flickers—“you've got to get this gone ASAP.”

Just say that you know.

“I know.”

“When did you go? Hunter, you're so stupid sometimes. Why would you go to Falter?”

She'll pick you apart if you talk about it.

Becca blasts me with messages, many of them about how stupid I am for running and that it's even worse because I didn't tell anyone.

Then I tell her I went on Friday.

“Last Friday???”

“Yeah.”

That sends her over the edge. Well, she's already fallen over the edge, so it sends her over another edge, somewhere. The edge after all the other edges.

“Hunter. Hunter...”

“I know.”

She's worried. I'm sort of worried too.

I think the lights in my room have dimmed.

Here comes Becca with all her so-called wisdom: “You have any idea what a demon is?”

It goes on for paragraphs. I think she copy-pasted them from other sites. I was going to do this anyway, so it works, but Becca's not going to let up now. But I needed to tell someone. I already feel better for having told someone. It's kind of like, “Why didn't you tell anyone?” But at the time, knowing what would happen, as in what's going to happen from this point on, it makes you dizzy. Like you want to faint. It'll be easier to just faint than having to see it all pop.

Becca tells me that demons aren't people. They never were people. They're unclean and dark masses. They look for hosts and try to
make the host theirs. They populate the earth and maybe come from other planes of existence. No one knows about that part, but demons can take the shape of you or something else who's close to you.

Then she lists out the symptoms.

She lists out the symptoms, and I swear:

They happen right as I read them.

Becca says it's common to see doors opening and closing.

My door opens but no one's there.

It remains open until after she lists out “cold spots” and “noises.”

My room gets really fucking cold, so cold that I can't really type, so I go and get another hoodie—I have a lot of hoodies—and put the hoodie on top of the hoodie I'm already wearing. Zip the fucker up, hood over my head. I feel like I've gained twenty pounds, everything's so tight and packed in, but I'm still going to get under the covers. I'm sweating but at least I'm not that cold.

There's sort of a banging noise, but I can't be sure where it's coming from.

“Hunter,” Becca types.

I haven't been responding, whoops. “What?”

“Are you having trouble sleeping?”

“You know I've got insomnia,” I reply.

“No, like, do you wake up at three
A.M
. every night?”

I think about this, but I don't really know. “I wake up a lot at night. That tossing and turning deal.”

“Think about it. Three
A.M
. Are you waking up at three
A.M
.?”

Shit. I don't really know, but the fact that she's stressing it is getting me worried. I ask her, “Why?”

“Because...” but she doesn't finish.

“Don't get stuck in other tabs, Becca. Tell me.”

“I'm reading about it. It's like three
A.M
. is significant. Dead time, they say.”

I watch as my bedroom door closes. “Do you believe in this stuff?”

“In what, demons?”

“No, not demons, but where they really come from, the whole spiritual thing?”

“I do, Hunter. I have to.”

“You don't have to do anything.”

“You have to get this taken care of. We need to call an exorcist.”

I feel dizzy. And cold. And I hear footsteps. Listen to how they seem to go from somewhere near my desk to the foot of my bed and then stop.

I think, “Okay, that's kind of scary.”

But again, it's hard to take this as real. It's hard to take it as really happening to me.

I type out whatever comes to mind: “I'm just really tired all the time. Like more than usual. It's like I can't stop thinking. But I'm not really thinking about anything.”

Becca doesn't reply for a long time. It shows that she's seen my messages, but she just doesn't reply.

I start searching for stuff on my own. There's a lot of stuff out there.

There's this one guy who had three demons competing for his approval. And another person—she's kind of hot—who is haunted and documenting the entire thing. She's already gotten a film option for it.

I watch an interview with her. She's pale as hell and keeps forgetting the questions they ask her. Her agent or whoever, the person with her, answers for her more often than she can. She looks like shit.

The agent says that the demon has already begun infestation. It's only a matter of days now. And the interviewer asks if they plan on full possession.

The woman speaks up: “It's too late for Suz now...”

Kind of weird how she says it too, there's a sort of monotone way about her voice.

I search for the term “infestation,” and I get thousands of results. No way I'm going through all of them. I click on the one at the top, the wiki entry for the term. It goes on about how infestation is only the first in three “prominent” steps in the circle of demonic possession.

It's what's happening to me right now. The haunting part.

Symptoms: the cold spots, the footsteps, the...

What literally just happened: a whisper that sounds like my voice saying my name. Kind of like, if I can explain it, “...unterrrrrrr...” Where the “H” in my name is missing and the end of my name, the “r” runs out long. Like a growl, maybe.

I click around, ending up on a wiki overview of the entire circle.

Three main steps—the first is infestation, which I know. The next is oppression, which is where “the host is broken down” and it looks like a lot of crazy and really scary stuff happens. I start reading about it but—

“Hunter, I left a voice mail with Father James, the best in the entire parish.” Becca goes to church. She goes to church every Sunday. I think she's gone to a bunch of exorcisms too. Religious people like exorcisms; apparently at the end, after the demon is gone, there's a feeling of unity in everyone there. I only know this because Becca tells me about it a lot. Never thought much of it until, you know, this started happening to me.

“That's good,” I reply.

“What else are you experiencing?” Becca asks.

I skim the article about oppression, but maybe it's better to not read it. I scroll to the top of the wiki entry, reading the last word, “possession.” Three big steps and the final is, like,
final.
It's all over by then.

The article says exorcizing the demon is best during stage one, but it is possible up until the end of stage two. But by stage three, the human body is so run-down that an exorcism, “though possible,” ends with “the host in a critical state.” Damn. How do you take that information?

I'm having a hard time even making sense of it.

Demons. They're all around us. Happens all the time.

But never to “you.” Until it actually does.

And then you're...

I...

A cold shiver runs through my entire body.

“Hunter?”

I watch Becca blast me with more messages.

I sense it somewhere, watching, and there's nothing I can do about it.