The Exorcee

Chapter Three

When I was a kid, there was an elderly Chinese fellow who used to practice t’ai chi in the park near our house. I still have a picture of him somewhere, that my big sister Jeannie took during her brief obsession with photography; it shows a small, frail-looking guy with white hair and black pajamas, serenely frozen in mid-motion as if he’d just realized the autumn breeze was about to blow him away. I was always too shy to talk to him, but I remember watching him and being utterly fascinated by how strong he was. To my eyes, he was clearly carrying a tremendous power around with him, a force of nature tenuously bound in the form of a tiny old man. I was almost ten before I got it through my head that other people couldn’t see what I saw. Not only in him—he was just my first glimpse, my catalyst—but eventually, to varying degrees, in everybody.

It may have crossed your mind to wonder why on earth a Catholic priest would employ a professed agnostic to track down the Possessed and the debatably Possessed. Well, that’s why: I can see qi. It’s a difficult word to translate—apparently it can be rendered as “breath,” “blood,” “energy,” “life,” and other thing besides—but I prefer simply, “spirit.” The Chinese pronounce it “chee,” as in t’ai chi (see above); the Japanese say “kee,” as in kiai (literally “spirit shout”) which martial artists like to scream when they hit each other. I spell it with a Q to allow either pronunciation (and also because it looks cool). As I mentioned earlier, I have difficulty believing in anything I can’t see; but when it comes to the life-force that pulses in every one of us, I know it’s real. And I can tell when a person’s being driven by an alien life-force. Comes in very handy in my work, as you can well imagine.

As for what it looks like—it’s not an easy thing to describe. The best I can say is that my sense of sight has a tactile dimension to it somehow, and the look of a person also has a weight that I can feel pushing back at me. The more solid the aura, the more powerful the qi. It’s been half a lifetime since I told Fr. Joe about my “five-and-a-halfth” sense, and I’m still puzzling over what he said to me way the hell back then. “This all sounds suspiciously pagan to me, son. But then, so did the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and that didn’t stop Augustine and Aquinas from constructing our theology on them.” I guess what he meant was something like “let’s just wait and see,” and a long, dark time went by between that conversation and the next one, when he finally put my hidden gift to work.

“All right, Belmont,” I muttered as Dave and I pulled up to the curb at Our Lady of Guadalupe. “Reconcile countless centuries of Christian and heathen mysticism on your own time. Right now we’ve got ass to kick.”

Up the long stone steps I went to the giant oaken doors; but at mid-day, mid-week, hours after morning Mass, the church was locked up like the secrets of the universe. I went around to the rectory for form’s sake, knowing that door too would be barred against my coming, and so it was. Ah well, I could interview the pastor in the evening. For now it was time to get comfortable and wait till either my quarry or a better idea came along. As I headed back to my car, the heavens opened up and the rain began to fall.

The usual dossier, of course, included several pictures of Mr. Norman Grey, so I sat there for awhile and studied them. Know your target. Or maybe client, that sounded nicer. Sure was pouring out there. There’s a word for the smell of rain, you know—petrichor. Accent on the first syllable. How much coffee had I had today? Only three cups. I could go get more. Come to think of it, I hadn’t eaten apart from some donuts and cereal. Plus, I’d have to go to the bathroom eventually. What time was it?—1:07. Why, I’d managed to kill three minutes already. Practically had this guy cornered. I yawned and settled a little deeper into my special cushy car seat, and a table came flying out through one of Our Lady’s stained-glass windows.

Out the door before it hit the ground. Up the stairs between two hammers of the heart. Over the steel railing, onto the marble ledge, across to the shattered window in the driving, blinding rain. The first lightning strike blazed in the darkening sky with a blast of thunder like the earth had broken in half. I dove in through the jagged orifice and rolled lightly to my feet on the carpet. The church was dark, but I could see him in the glow of the one red monstrance candle forever burning on the altar. He turned, very slowly, and smiled.

“Belmont.”

That little trick no longer impressed me. They always know your name. What did impress me was the sheer force emanating from the man—or rather, from the appearance of the man, the mask of gristle and bone. I could feel Grey in there, a fluttering zephyr of a qi; but the energy gibbering out at me like a wall of wind was something else entirely. I’d never seen one this strong before.

“Hey there, Norman.” Rule number one: never, ever talk to a demon. That is the exorcist’s job. If you think talking will do any good—and it does, sometimes—address yourself solely to the person inside. “I’m gonna take you to see someone. He can help you.”

“Help me?” His face suddenly twisted into a snarl. “Help, help, help, help, help? Meeeeeeeeee. . . Ha! I know you, Belmont. Doubt, doubt like swine-stink on you, a pig on a cliff on a cliff on a cliff, you pig-fucking pig, Belmont! You can’t help anyone.”

He must have tampered with the sound system before embarking on his rampage: “In the Hall of the Mountain King” was murmuring over the speakers, beginning to rise. Only a couple of pews were overturned; he’d been hiding in here, grinning in the shadows, waiting for the storm. A tall thin ordinary man, grown slightly bald, with a decent pin-stripe tie. I could feel the music building in my chest.

“Listen, I’ve just been talking with Ella. She’s worried about you. She loves you.”

“Lust!” He spat. “Rutting sow. You should worry, Belmont. No one’s coming to save you. Any of you. There’s nothing, nothing, nothing. You’re born between piss and shit.”

“Norm—buddy. I need you to come with me now. I’d like you to do it willingly.”

“Axe time, sword time, ere the world fall. Moloch! Belphegor! Nails, red nails.” He bared his teeth. “I will make you scream forever.”

“That sounds an awful lot like a no.”

He threw his head back and howled, and the music crescendoed, and the thunder outside exploded, and I went sprinting down the aisle and sailing through the air and caught him with a flying jump kick square in the chest. It flung him back onto the steps of the altar, but as I came running up to finish him off, he bounded to his feet and caught my arm and shirt and launched me into the air like a rag doll. I snatched at the huge wooden crucifix on cables over the altar, swung around it, and came hurtling back for a double-leg drop kick that knocked him sprawling in the aisle. I let the momentum carry me past him and headed for the entrance at a dead run. Obviously I needed something bigger than my fists for this battle.

Grey jerked himself upright and came screeching after me; I turned just in time, fell backwards as he caught up to me, planted my heels in his chest, and flipped him over my head, and he smashed through the exit doors leading to the vestibule. I kipped to my feet and dive-tackled a life-sized statue of St. George the dragon-slayer standing to the left of the holy water font at the entrance: the legs crumbled and the torso became the world’s biggest blackjack, which I fireman-carried through the ruined doors and bashed to pieces over Grey’s slavering visage of murder and hate. He flailed his way through the impact and debris and slammed me with his palms like a schoolyard bully, hurling me backwards all the way across the room, and I crashed through the door leading up to the bell tower. For half a second I lolled on the stairs wondering who I was and why this pencil-necked maniac was stomping the living balls out of me, and then the adrenaline took over and I went scrambling up the steps as Grey lunged after me, still yowling like a hideous monstrosity, which of course he was.

All of this took less than twenty seconds. The crushing weight of pain, exhaustion, and fear hadn’t yet caught up to me, and years of rigorous training easily trumped a few weeks of alcoholic inactivity. Up and up and up I went, with Hell on my heels, till we issued forth in a vast unlit chamber of bells and dust. My strategy had evolved very, very quickly from attack to retreat, so I ran straight for the window that offered the only egress. Grey was right behind me and he stiff-armed the nearest bell as he passed, and it set the whole panoply pealing forth in knells and jangles like a madman’s funeral dirge. I burst through the window and plummeted through falling shards of glass and rain to the sharply slanting roof, well over a hundred feet high. My enemy landed heavily a second after I did, and the stone shingles cracked beneath his feet.

“Okay.” I backed away, gasping for breath, holding out my hands. “Clearly, we’ve misunderstood each other here. But we must have some common ground. I’m interested, for example, in your earlier comment about Moloch. Wasn’t he the devil-god of the Carthaginians? Please, tell me more. I’m sure you have a unique perspective on this topic.”

He—it—paced slowly closer, leering. “You’re right to doubt, little pig. Their faith is foolish.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Don’t talk to it, Belmont.

“Why, why, why? What are you fighting for? Do you think He cares? Fool! You mean nothing to Him.”

“Expect you’re right. Well, I should get going. Nice talking with you.”

“Say it, creature of slime. Say that you are nothing to Him.”

I stood glaring at that old accursed thing as the dying echoes of the bells rang on the sky around us raged in torrents of black water and white fire. For all I knew, it was right. For all I knew, He didn’t care at all—if He was even there. But I was damned if I was going to say all that to gratify this evil joyless wretch of a being, especially considering the high probability that my next words would be my last. I wasn’t really the “Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit” type, but I at least wanted my expiring utterance to be something cool. “I’m Batman,” perhaps.

“Say it, Belmont.” It was only a couple of steps away, and I was running out of roof. “Say it!”

“Aw, go to Hell.” I dropped, spun, and executed arguably the single best leg-sweep of a long and distinguished career. This thing was stronger than Schwarzenegger and could take a Tyson pounding, but it had no training or finesse. The second it lost its footing, gravity and the steep-angled rooftop did the rest: it went tumbling down the incline, clutching vainly at the rain-slick tiles and caterwauling with rage, and disappeared over the edge. I listened for the distant thump, but it never came. “Crap.” Couldn’t catch a break with a net today.

Still wheezing for air, I forced my spent limbs back into a shambling run. A corrugated aluminum gutter-pipe led from the corner of the bell tower all the way down to the lawn, and that looked like my quickest exit. I kicked it by way of testing its load-bearing capacity; it shuddered, but held. Good enough. Vaulting out over the edge, I grabbed a hold and went sliding down. Landed in a bush. Again: good enough.

I came around the corner of the church and saw Dave sitting at the curb with the driver’s door still half-open in the rain, and it was like a sacred vision of Paradise. I scanned the street rapidly as I mustered up a final dash to the car, but there was no sign of pursuit. As always, the big D awoke ready for mayhem, and we peeled the hell out of there like a million stampeding velociraptors were on our tail. Just to be sure, I took a high-speed swing around the block to the spot where Grey should have landed, but it served only to confirm that he’d somehow vanished.

It was 1:11. If only I hadn’t answered the phone this morning, I could’ve finished my Bushmills by now. But it’s never too late. I stuffed a napkin into my bleeding nose and headed for home.