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jgmartin · 1 year

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HOUSE OF THE HOLY

It’s a scary thing, being apart from yourself— being a tool. Have you ever been possessed? I’m guessing not. Most haven’t. And they can thank their lucky stars for that.

I have though.

I’ve felt the suffocating grip of something closing around my mind, squeezing it until every last ounce of me was gone. I've felt the horror of knowing I'm not alone. The horror of knowing I might never be alone again.

Three days after I turned six, my life turned into confetti. It tore itself into little pieces, each less recognizable than the last. That night, my foster parents locked me in the attic. They told me that a monster was coming to eat me— a werewolf.

“We’ll let you out in an hour,” they laughed. “If there’s anything left to let out.”

It wasn’t real. Of course it wasn’t real. The whole thing was just a twisted power play, a means to scare me into obeying their overbearing rules. I was young, though. Naive. And the thing about being young and naive is sometimes you say and do things that you live to regret, and I’d done exactly that.

I’d confided in them my greatest fear: men that turned into beasts. Werewolves.

I gave them my vulnerability, openness. They gave me psychological warfare.

Betrayal cuts deep, but the betrayal of a parent— the person meant to protect you when the whole world turns its back on you— that cuts deeper than skin.

Those scars don’t fade.

I spent my first minutes in the attic screaming and crying, beating my fist against the door. They answered this with a volley of threats, beginning and ending with three hours standing in the corner, balanced on my tippy-toes, if I so much as dared to open that hatch.

“You deserve this,” Papa Joey told me. “You knew damn well to keep your eyes closed during that Sunday prayer, but you opened em’ anyway. You embarrassed us. Humiliated us, not just in front of the church, but Father Andrews too. People are gonna think we don’t know how to raise a child, or that we can’t keep a little boy in line. You think that’s funny? You think that’s fair to us?”

“Shame on you,” Mama Sharon said.

They weren’t lying— at least, not about me opening my eyes. I was a distractible child. Later, I’d be diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, so what was I supposed to do? That didn’t matter to them, though.

In their eyes, not only had I disrespected the law of the house, I’d disrespected the law of the Lord. That made punishing me easy. Necessary. It made punishing me an act of God.

“Do I really have to stay up here a whole hour?” I whimpered, gazing warily across the sea of darkness. The light in the attic hadn’t worked for as long as I’d lived there.

“That depends,” Mama Sharon replied. “If the werewolf gets you first, you might only be in there for ten or twenty minutes.”

“Who knows?” Papa Joey called as they left down the hallway. “You might just get lucky."

They descended the steps, chuckling to themselves.

The thought of opening the hatch and slipping out of there crossed my mind. It crossed my mind over and over again, as a matter of fact, but I knew it wouldn’t be worth it. As scared as I was, I’d lived with Mama and Papa for eight months by then, and I knew well what kind of punishment they were capable of doling out.

For this, I’d be in the corner for certain. On my tippy toes.

If they saw me resting my feet— even for a moment, they’d get out the wooden board with the nails in it. They’d slip that under my heels. I’d been there before.

I never, ever wanted to be there again.

So I did my best to swallow my fear. I took a deep breath and braced myself against the nightmare of the attic. “I’m not afraid of you!” I said to the shadows. “I’m a monster too, you know!”

It was a lie. I was no more a monster than I was an astronaut, or a dinosaur. I was just a scrawny kid who missed his mom, sitting in an attic that seemed to press upon you from all sides. But it was all that I had. See, the only thing I knew capable of harming a werewolf was a silver bullet, and I was fresh out of those, so I went with the next best thing: convincing the werewolf I wasn’t prey.

I began my punishment sitting near the hatch. It seemed the safest option, and vibrating with adrenaline and panic, safety was at the top of my mind. I waited silently, eyes closed, heart fluttering, listening for a growl or howl to meet my ears, for the sounds of my doom to rush out and greet me. But they never did.

Once I’d made it ten minutes without being eaten, I started to calm down. Maybe there weren’t any monsters up there, after all. Maybe I was just afraid of the dark. If that was the case, then that was a problem I could solve.

The broken lightswitch was far beyond my ability to repair, but I knew for a fact there were a couple of flashlights laying around here somewhere. I’d used them while helping Papa Joey put out mouse traps. Trouble was, there was enough junk in the attic to fill a small museum, so finding which teetering box those flashlights were in might take some time.

Still, time was one of the few things not in short supply up there.

Closing my eyes, I took a breath, steeling myself against the darkness ahead. Then I stepped off. Into the unknown.

My footsteps groaned as I crept through the attic. Much of my movement consisted of stumbling around blindly, holding my arms out like Frankenstein’s monster and praying I didn’t encounter anything with fur. A few steps into my journey I bumped into something. My heart jumped, but it was just an old table.

I felt its surface, figuring if there was a flashlight up here then it was probably somewhere on th—

Eight tiny legs skittered across my hand. I flailed, falling backward and knocking the spider off of my skin. Heart pounding, I sat there and caught my breath.

“You’re kidding, Franky!” The television echoed from below the floorboards. “Keep that up, and you won’t just be outta a job— you’ll be out of a wife!” A laugh track kicked in, joined by Mama Sharon shrieking in amusement and clapping her hands. From the sounds of it, they were watching their favorite sitcom again. I’d never seen it since I wasn’t allowed to watch TV, but I always wondered if it was as funny as they made it seem.

“It’s not.”

I jumped, startled by the voice. “What?”

“You deaf, kid? I said it’s not. It ain’t that funny.”

My heart struck my ribcage like a hammer. No, no, no. This wasn’t happening. It’s just the dark, that’s all. There’s nothing to be afraid of in the dark because I’m all alone and there’s no such thing as monsters and it’s just the TV that I’m hearing and—

“You’re not alone, kid. And I ain’t Will or Grace, either.”

I scrambled backward, away from the voice as quickly as I could. Too quickly. My head found the downward slope of the attic’s roof and hit it with a crack. Pain exploded across my skull. “Stay back,” I groaned, my vision swimming. “If you don’t I’ll—”

“You’ll do nothing!” the voice sneered.

“I—I’m a werewolf,” I warned, my voice shaking with counterfeit authority. “Stay back. It’s a full moon tonight and—”

“Ain’t no full moon, and you ain’t no werewolf.”

Something thumped a short way from me, and my mouth went dry. Another thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. The floorboards trembled. My eyes swiveled to the thin square of light that outlined the attic hatch. It was rattling. Somebody was knocking on it from below.

“You breaking things up there?” Poppa Joey shouted. “You better not be! Any more banging around and you can forget the werewolf. I’ll come up there and beat your ass myself!”

Even then, I could hear the voice whispering all around me, moving around the attic like an unholy breeze. “Please,” I said quietly, making myself small in the corner. “There’s something up here! I need you.”

“You think I’m stupid, boy?”

My mouth trembled, my entire body quaked. I recognized the tone in Papa Joey’s voice.

“I asked you a fucking question, didn’t I?” he bellowed. “Answer me when I speak to you!”

“N-no sir,” I said, tears welling in my eyes. “I don’t think you’re stupid, Papa.”

“Then why are you lying to me?” Something struck the bottom of the hatch and made it jump violently— his fist. “You just earned yourself another half hour up there. Keep up this shitty behavior and I’ll show you some shitty behavior of my own. Understand?”

I whimpered.

“DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND?”

“Yes sir!” I called, doing my best to keep the tears in my eyes. “Yes sir, I understand sir!”

“Good,” he muttered. His footsteps faded as he made his way back downstairs.

“What’s he broken?” I heard my Mama ask at the bottom of the steps.

“Nothing,” Papa said, raising his voice so I could hear. “If he doesn’t want me breaking something of his, it’ll stay that way. Lord knows I’ll start with the teeth. Ain’t nothing out of the ordinary about a young boy missing a tooth.”

Laughter rang out around the attic. “You’re not safe here,” the voice said, right beside me. “Not safe here at all.”

I recoiled, terrified, but careful not to make a sound. The voice sounded low, raspy and inhuman. It sounded hungry. “Please,” I said. “Leave me alone. I wasn’t kidding about being a werewolf you know.”

“Do you want to be safe?” the voice hissed, slithering all around me like a cockroach on my skin. “I can make you safe. I can make all this pain go away. Doesn’t that sound… nice? Just say the word and poof, you’re home free, back with dear mommy.”

“What word?” I said, confused.

The voice tutted in my ears, as if it were on both sides of me at once. “Oh, don’t play coy. You know the word. The one you say kneeling beside your bed every night, praying to the big cheese in the sky.”

“Amen?”

“Amen?” More laughter, this time sardonic, mocking. “Give me a fucking break, kiddo. I mean the other word, the one you whimper with tears in your eyes and fear in your heart— afraid Mama and Papa might hear you say it out loud.”

A terrible feeling was beginning to take hold in my gut. The voice sounded suddenly so much worse than a simple werewolf. It sounded sinister. Like it was manipulating me. Testing me. “I don’t have tears in my eyes when I pray,” I said defiantly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

The voice — whatever it was — stepped forward then, and the entire attic rattled against its weight. Dust drifted down from the rafters. Floorboards shuddered.

It was loud.

Too loud.

“The fuck did I just tell you, boy?” Papa Joey hollered from below. “So help me God, if I have to get up from this couch you’re gonna wish there really was a lock on that fucking hatch!”

I slammed my eyes shut. “Go away,” I said quietly. “Please, whatever you are, just go away.”

“No.”

It took another step forward, and the attic shook again. This time, the frame of the house trembled with it, rumbling as it braced itself against the monster inside.

“I’m not playing around,” Papa growled from below, and this time his voice was different. Something had wormed its way inside of it. Something dangerous. Deadly. “One more time, boy. Try me one more time and I swear to you that it’ll be the last...”

“He’s mad,” I whimpered, clutching my hands to my ears. “He’s really mad and he’s gonna think it’s me. Please, you’ve got to stop. You’ve got to go!”

"I'm not going anywhere,” the voice whispered. “You're stuck with me."

My heart fell. My world was practically spinning, the situation had spiraled so far outside of my control and I knew that no matter what, once the television episode was over Papa Joey would come up here and show me just how angry he was.

“What's this?” the voice asked, bemused. A sound met my ears; dull and low, like a cardboard box sliding off of a wooden table.

My heart froze.

“Looks expensive.”

"No! Don't—"

My plea was cut short, interrupted by a symphony of shattered glass. A half-second later and another box tipped. Something tumbled out of it, obnoxious and heavy, rolling across the creaky floor like a bowling ball.

"I'm going to make you believe," the voice hissed. "No matter what it takes."

I sat, paralyzed with fear, waiting to hear Papa shout my name and tell me that was the last straw. But I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t hear Papa yelling, or Mama either. I didn’t even hear the television.

Something snapped from below. “... nothing in him this fucking belt won’t fix!”

Footsteps thundered up the stairs.

“Why are you doing this?” I shrieked into the darkness. “Why are you making them hurt me?” Tears poured from my eyes as I trembled in the corner, taking deep, heaving breaths as I prepared myself for the discipline I was soon to receive. For the pain.

“I’m trying to teach you a lesson!” the voice cackled. “Now say the word, boyo! Say the word or you’ll beg for it later, beaten and bruised!”

“No!” I shouted, shaking my head furiously. Tears stained my cheeks. “I know what you are! I know what evil monsters like you do, but I’m a good kid and I pray every night so just leave me alone!”

A fist pounded against the underside of the hatch. Then it rattled, like somebody was pulling on the handle, trying to get it open, but it wouldn’t budge. “Get your hands off the hatch!” Papa Joey roared.

“Say the word,” the voice hissed.

I plugged my ears, curling into a ball. “No! Just me alone and go away.”

“Do it now, before he gets you! He sounds so angry!”

Mama’s voice joined the chaos below. “What’s he done now, Joey? Locked himself up there?”

The hatch rattled, and I heard Joey grunt. “What’s it look like, Sharon?”

“Well just leave him there, then! If he wants to stay up there with the werewolves he can stay there all weekend if he pleases.”

"No he damn well can't, Sharon!" Papa shouted. "I've got valuable things in those boxes and the little shitstain's destroying them!" Joey heaved and the attic hatch squealed, sounding as though he were pulling against it with his entire weight.

“Running out of time,” the voice said, up against my ear. “Tick tock. Say the word, or you’ll pay for this in blood. Who knows when he’ll stop beating you? Hopefully before you drop dead.”

I screamed then, lashing out and throwing out my fists helplessly into the dark, doing anything I could to stop the voice from talking. From tormenting me. “Stop it!” I shrieked. “Stop it!”

In all my life I’d never felt so helpless. So afraid. There wasn’t any escape here. Threats surrounded me. Below, my foster parents were beating down the attic door, while all around me a voice taunted and jeered, goading me to turn away from God, to make me admit I didn’t have the faith I claimed to.

I just wanted them both to go away. Forever.

I just wanted to go to my room and play with my action figures and read my story books. I just wanted to be a normal kid again, with a normal family. I wanted to feel safe.

A sharp creak sounded, followed by a snap of wood. Light flooded the attic and I gazed in horror toward the now open hatch, feeling suddenly weak and helpless. Joey had broken the steps clean off of their hinges.

“Obnoxious little shit,” Papa snarled, stomping up the stomps.

“Don’t kill him, Joey,” Mama Sharon said casually. “Just smarten him up. He’s been nothing but disobedient since he got here last July.”

“Oh, I’ll smarten him up,” Papa said, face appearing above the floor line with bulging eyes. “I’ll teach him a lesson so good he’ll wish he was back with that drug addict whore he calls a mother.”

“Papa!” I called out, whimpering. “It wasn’t me! There was—”

“More lies, boy?” He reached for his waist and unslung his belt, snapping it in his hands. The metal buckle gleamed in the light. “This time,” Papa said, stepping forward, “I’m not gonna stop until you bleed.”

I recoiled, raising my hands defensively. “Please,” I sobbed. “P-please don’t, Papa. I’m sorry I—” A crack sounded and pain exploded across my hands. I gasped, instinctively scrambling away but strong hands grabbed me and dragged me back.

“This time I’ll give you the buckle,” Papa growled.

Tears gushed from my eyes. Blood leaked from my hands. A word fell from my mouth with all the force of an atomic bomb.

“Well, well,” the voice whispered, dripping with violence. “Took you long enough.”

_____________________

I woke up in a large, white bed inside of a pale gray room.

“Look who’s up,” said a familiar voice. I squinted, my eyes adjusting to the brightness of the space. A man in a robe with a crucifix necklace stood at my bedside, staring down at me with cold, calculated eyes. “It only took you four days.”

I blinked, bleary-eyed. “Father Andrews?” I mumbled. “I’ve been asleep for four days?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Where am I?”

He looked around, as though appraising the setting for the first time himself. “If I had to guess, I’d say we were inside of a hospital, weren’t we?” He shot me a smile. “It’s fine, I’ve got most of the curtains drawn so it’s hard to tell. Besides, I’m sure somebody your age hasn’t had many occasions to be here.”

I sat up, confused and disoriented. “What happened?”

Father Andrews frowned, his expression growing grave. “That’s what I was hoping you could tell me, Alex. You don’t remember anything?”

“No, Father,” I said, shaking my head. Memories flashed in my mind— of a belt, of Papa’s angry face storming up the attic steps. “I remember being in a lot of trouble,” I began. “I remember feeling…”

“Feeling what, Alex?”

The word I wanted to say was afraid, but I knew I’d get in worse trouble for saying that. It wasn’t fair of me to make Mama and Papa look bad in front of the Father. Not when I did that so much already.

“I remember feeling tired,” I lied, before quickly changing the subject. “Why am I in the hospital, Father? Am I okay?”

“That depends. Do you feel okay?”

“I think so. I feel tired and I’ve got a headache but mostly I feel alright.”

Father Andrews moved closer to me, and a gravity fell across his expression. When he spoke, it was in a quiet, measured tone. “Do you feel like yourself?”

My head spun. Memories lurched out of dark spots in my mind, memories of a voice, of a malevolent presence tempting me to admit I’d been crying during my prayers. Now I was here, in the hospital next to Father Andrews. A priest.

“What happened?" I asked, more urgently. Even at six, I could connect the dots that something was very wrong. “Something happened didn’t it and—”

“Easy, Alex,” Father Andrews soothed. “The doctors have been in. You’ll be happy to hear that, as far as they can tell, you’re fine. A little worse for wear, but nothing that won’t clear in a few days. And the doctors will be happy to hear you’ve woken from your coma.”

“Coma?” The word was new to me, but I felt like I’d heard it before. It felt like something bad, like something you didn’t want to have happen to you. Terror shot through me. “Are Mama and Papa mad at me?” I asked.

A sinking feeling formed in my gut. The voice had destroyed so much stuff in the attic, and now that Mama and Papa had gotten a good look at it they were probably furious with me. I’d likely get a second-helping of discipline when I got home.

“Sharon and Joseph are dead,” Father Andrews said.

My mouth fell open. The gravity of the word was almost beyond my understanding. “What do you mean?”

Father Andrews sighed, then pulled the rest of the curtain shut around my bed, shielding us from view. “Alex, this is difficult to say... but they’re dead because of you. You killed them.”

I blinked. The situation felt like a bad dream, like a scenario so awful that it couldn’t possibly be true. “I killed them?” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “No… No I didn’t I—”

“You burned away every ounce of blood in their bodies and seared crucifixes into their foreheads. When the police showed up, they were husks. You were comatose."

I swallowed, my mouth dry. “No, that’s not right, I…” Horror wrapped itself around me as more memories unearthed themselves. This time, I remembered the attic, and the voice. I remembered it tempting me to break my vows to God by speaking a word. If I just spoke the word, it said, it could make the pain go away. “I loved them,” I said, my voice cracking with the onset of tears. “I wouldn’t hurt them because I loved them. I promise!”

Father Andrews folded his arms. “That may be, but they're dead now.” He reached into his robes and produced a small, clear vial. Unstoppering it, he held it above my head. “Now that you’re awake, let’s try this again.” He tilted the vial and doused me in the liquid.

I coughed and sputtered as it fell into my nose and eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Holy water,” he explained. He gave the empty vial a gentle shake in front of me. “Over the past three days I’ve poured various amounts onto you, but it’s never had any effect. Do you know why that is?”

Holy Water. It was something I once learned about in Sunday School: water that had been blessed to protect against demons and other terrible things. If he had been pouring that on me, then it was because he suspected…

I gazed up at him, horrified. “It wasn’t my fault!” I cried, shaking my head as though if I just denied it hard enough, then I could make it all go away. The demon. The dead parents. All of it. I just wanted a second chance.

“What wasn’t your fault?” he replied.

Guilt twisted inside of me. “The demon in the attic!” I blurted out. “I didn’t mean to talk to it, I swear! It just kept pressuring me and pressuring me and then I got so scared, and I accidentally said the word but I didn’t mean to, I didn’t…” I broke off into a long sob.

It was as though the entire experience had been bottled up before, whether because the memories still hadn’t caught up to me, or the guilt hadn’t, but now it was all falling out of me like a river.

Father Andrews grabbed me by my shoulders. “You said a word?”

I nodded, my lip curled up and snot leaking down my nose. “I didn’t mean to.”

“What word?”

“I…” The word sat on the tip of my tongue, but fear gripped me. What if the demon was waiting in here, unseen just like it had been in the attic? What if when I said the word, the demon would crawl right back inside of me and start killing people all over again? I couldn’t face that. I couldn’t risk that. “I… can’t,” I said.

Father Andrews brought his mouth next to my ear. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, deliberate. “What. Was. The. Word. Alex?”

“If I say the word,” I explained. “Then the demon might come back and hurt—”

“Say it!” he snapped. “Say the damn word!”

I slammed my eyes shut, pursing my lips and shaking my head. There was no way I could do it. No way. Not after hearing what had happened the last time.

The Father snarled and tore the crucifix from his necklace and pressed it against my forehead. He muttered words in a language I didn’t understand. “Enough excuses! Now say it!"

"Help," I whimpered.

"I'll help you once I'm sure—"

"No," I said. "That was the word. I asked for… help."

"Help?" He stared at me blankly, mouth hanging open as though processing something. “Did you say that you asked for… help?”

I nodded, shaken.

“Oh, Lord Almighty Above.” He heaved a sigh, pocketing his crucifix and sitting down in the chair next to my bed. “Thank God.”

The situation had only gotten more confusing. “I’m sorry, Father. Thank God… for what?”

He took a breath, then another. Eventually, he stood up and approached my bedside, placing a hand on my arm. “Things aren’t as bad as they seem.”

“They’re not? Does this mean I wasn’t possessed? That it wasn’t me that hurt Mama and Papa?”

Father Andrews’ smile faltered. “I don’t have much experience with this, so you’ll forgive my bluntness. But you deserve the truth.” He paused. His next words came slowly. “It’s clear to me that you really were possessed, Alex. And, for better or worse, that same force used you to commit violence against Joseph and Sharon. Through you, it killed them.”

My heart fell.

In that moment, my world, small as it was, collapsed around me in slow motion. I shrank before Father Andrews. I wanted to keep shrinking— become tinier and tinier until there was nothing left of me and I wouldn’t feel this horrible guilt and shame. My body quaked with the fresh onset of tears. “Am I evil now? Will that demon keep possessing me?”

Father Andrews stared at me as though dumbstruck. “Demon?”

I tried to respond, but it just came out as a torrent of ugly sobs.

A moment later, he seemed to have realized something. He shook his head as though chastising himself and then pulled me close, wrapping me in one of the warmest embraces I’ve ever felt. “You weren’t possessed by a demon, Alex.”

He squeezed me.

“You were possessed by an angel.”

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