Luke Bishop watches as the sun sets into the hills, a large serving of clear white wine in his fluted glass. It isn’t his first drink tonight and surely wouldn't be the last. He's on the patio of the Crescent Moon Motel, watching the sky through his thick frames. The tremor in his hands fades with each sip of the drink. He knew he had it--the Irish curse--but would he listen to reason? With his Holy Gift in tow (which seems to him lately like another curse), he doubted he would ever know another way of living and was unwilling at the moment to try.
Luke gets a text letting him know that his ride is here. He fills up his emergency flask with Tito’s vodka and hides it in his coat’s hidden inner pocket. He comes inside, slides on his loafers and heads down the dingy stairs, the walls reeking of cigarette smoke and dust. He has to supposedly exorcize someone– a rare occurrence that typically results in him encountering a mentally ill person rather than someone possessed. Still, he has his blessed salt and holy water in his satchel, ready to burn any creature of darkness he might run into.
When he arrives, there’s a timid, scrawny women with a blonde bob. “Thank you for coming, Father. Please, come in, and take off your shoes.”
Luke slides his shoes off in their mud room, then heads up the creaky wooden stairs. There’s some kind of machine on the right side of the wall to carry someone in a wheelchair upwards safely with a seat belt hanging down and a lever.
“So, run through what we spoke about on the phone,” he says. He omits the fact that he was blackout drunk at the time and that his notes on the matter are illegible in his drunken chicken scratch scrawl that would make a doctor’s crappy signature look like calligraphy.
If this arises suspicions, the woman (She emailed him before–he remembers her name is Rebecca) doesn’t express them. “It’s my mother,” and the farther they travel up the stairs, the worse he feels. The negative, evil energy is a gross feeling that brings back up the whispers of the Damned. They’re still faint, thank the Lord, but the psychic silence he previously had is broken, shattered. He takes solace in the fact that his energy must be causing the creature the same distress, two forces clashing against each other.
“My pastor says you’re the best around, which is why we had you come up all this way. She mainly moves objects around, causing a ruckus. She flew a plate into my father’s face the other day– we had to bring him into the ER with a concussion. He’s there now, something off with his pulse. My sister is with him and they should be home soon, and I’d love to have this issue resolved by then. Every day it’s something new, each phenomena weirder than the last. I don’t want it to progress any more than this,” she says with a shudder.
They finally arrive at a door at the end of the upstairs hall where he can hear the beeping of a heart monitor and the weak wheezing of someone without much time left. The door opens, revealing a frail woman with a dyed brown pixie cut and purple glasses. She’s in a red sweater that seems to swallow her and has a quilt tucked around her.
“Who are you?” she croaks.
“Hi Mom. This is Father Bishop. She’s usually very independent, but her health took a rapid decline recently. She’s usually sharp as a tack, but has had bad brain fog lately.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!”
Luke cringes in sympathy, heading to the bedside and taking her by the wrinkled hand. Her nails are almost purple and some of her nails have broken off. The whispers are now at a regular volume, with an ache in the back of his skull.
“I’m going to perform a ritual. Could you sprinkle this salt around the bed, please? And I’ll need you to leave in case it gets dangerous.”
This is where some loved ones would argue, but Rebecca simply nods, quickly performs the task and scurries off.
“Will this hurt?” asks the old woman.
Luke opens his satchel. He doesn’t answer.
“She asked you a fucking question,” spits a deep, rumbling voice, and though it comes from her lips, its painstakingly obvious the voice doesn’t belong to her.
“For you, demon. Not for her.”
A good exorcist’s work is never done, he thinks to himself. A heavy cross to bear, truly.
The door slams closed and locks abruptly.
“Just you and me, pastor.”
“I’m a Catholic priest,” he clarifies nonchalantly, opening his satchel which is flung from his hands by an invisible force and out the window, glass shattering violently.
Luke presses his mouth into a tight line and furrows his brows. The demon is a powerful one, at that. He’ll have to break out the big guns.
This is going to be a long night, for sure.
