The Violation

Noah sits at the kitchen table, hollowed out by the fever. The wood grain prints into his clammy palms. The mug in front of him has gone cold. A dull throb sits behind his temples like a stone. This is not ordinary sickness. The kitchen air has turned icy and stagnant, and with it comes a smell that does not belong in a house: wet earth, scorched wood, something sweet going rotten.

The presence steps in before he can name it. The hair at the nape of his neck lifts. His breath leaves him in a faint white plume. The ordinary warmth of the house drops out from under him. The smell thickens at the back of his throat, iron and damp wool, and he has to swallow against it.

A violent wave of vertigo hits him. The kitchen tilts. Gravity yanks at his gut like an elevator snapping its cable. Light breaks into sick halos. Across the table, David Bear’s voice comes muffled, as if through deep water. Noah grips the table edge so he does not slide out of the chair. His warning comes out raspy and thin. The room is spinning. He has to lie down. Now.

He forces himself up. His knees want to buckle. His limbs hang like soaked wool. He steadies on the table, then the doorframe. Each step across the floor tilts. The air resists him, thick as a frozen current. At the bedroom door he grips the jamb with white knuckles. The room beyond is dark. The weight at his back tells him he did not cross the kitchen alone.

The moment he crosses the threshold, the room stops being his. Cedar and lavender are gone. What meets him is the sour bite of old terror and frozen earth, sweet at the edges like meat left too long. The walls pull away and then press in. Nothing in the dark belongs to him. The floorboards feel hollow, as if the living soil under the house has been scraped out and only a cold hole remains.

Panic takes his chest the way a cornered animal takes it. His shirt is already glued to his back with cooling sweat. There is no door behind him that still opens onto safety.

His knees hit the floor first. The shock runs up his spine. He claws forward on hands and knees, hauling the dead weight of himself toward the mattress. His palms drag on grit he cannot see. His fingers catch the quilt. It is damp and heavy, slightly slimy, as if it has been breathed on for days. He drags himself up until gravity lets go.

He lands face-first in the pillow. The linen is already wet with him. It tastes of spit and cold and something spoiled. His throat seizes. Drool soaks the case. He digs his elbows into the sheets and heaves, thrashing until his shoulder blades hit the mattress.

He stares at the ceiling. The plaster moves like dark water over a hole in the ground. Pressure settles on his sternum, not clean ice but a weight with a wrong warmth to it, like someone else’s skin. The last air leaves him. His vision flares white at the edges and shrinks. The ceiling goes. The room goes. He goes with it.

When he opened his eyes he couldn’t move. He tried to open his mouth, but it was sealed shut. His warm bed and comforter were gone, and his nude body was on the ground, freezing cold, like a metal slab that had been pulled out of a refrigerator. His body quaked and with all his might he started turning his head to locate himself. He took it in: the cracked buttermilk-colored walls, the graffiti, the sigils and gibberish, Hebrew letters written around what looked like Vodou veves, one veve drawn backwards, the lines running the wrong way.

The slab had taken the heat out of him. Where his shoulders and ass met the metal, the skin stuck, then tugged free when he shook, a thin wet peel. Inside the sealed mouth his tongue worked against a glue of spit and old blood. The air did not smell like the kitchen anymore. It smelled like a drain, like rust, like a body left on its back too long.

He glanced at his wrist which was bound. He pulled as hard as he could, but it was pulled so tight it felt like his shoulder was dislocating. He was spread eagle, on his back, as if four spirits were about to perform a medieval rite of dismemberment. His body was going into shock and his nervous system was crashing.

The rope had bitten past skin. His fingers were going fat and numb. Each pull made a wet sound at the wrist, a little give of meat, and nothing else moved. The metal under his spine had begun to sweat. He could feel his own fear sliding along the small of his back, warm for a second, then cold. His teeth tried to chatter behind the seal and only made his lips tear.

He heard footsteps, heeled boots on the hard floor, each click closer than the last. His vision was obscured, a smear of dark and cracked buttermilk wall, and then the smear thinned and he saw her. A terrifying woman, unnaturally tall, in black, with a cheap witch’s cape hanging off her shoulder. The hem dragged across his bare hip. It smelled of old smoke and wet nylon. “Are you ready to cast our spell?” The sound of her voice was faint, distorted, and high pitched, the kind of voice Noah was allergic to. It crawled into the sealed seam of his mouth and sat there. There was no way out, no movement, no safe word, no untangling the binding that had been put on his body.

With that Noah heard another voice coming from the door that had been shut on the other side of the room. He could not make out the words, the voice was not recognizable. He turned his head. He was inside a circle drawn with white chalk, with objects inside, some looked like household tools, others looked obscene. The shadow of the witch passed by blacking out all light. There were candles on the outside of the circle. Noah heard rustling, commotion, and past the candles was a bird, a black rooster, inside a cage. The cage stank of shit and damp feathers. The witch opened it, reached in, and grabbed the animal by its feet. The bird squawked as it fought to stay in the cage, claws raking, wings beating dust and mite-stink into the chalk, then gave up. Its body went heavy in her hand. A drop of something warm hit the floor.

The witch turned to look at Noah, the bird still twitching in her grip, and moved towards one of the walls. She muttered, her body jerked and contorted, as if a spirit was trying to land on her neck. She bent down and placed the head of the rooster under her boot between that heel and the ball. The beak opened and closed on nothing. And with one yank she popped off the head like a cork flying out of a bottle of champagne. The neck did not come clean. It came with a wet string of meat and a hose of blood that would not quit. The blood flowed so hard it splattered across Noah’s face, landing in his eyes and against the seal of his lips. It was hot. It found the glue of his lips and forced its way in, copper and feather-dust, until he was swallowing what he could not spit. He shook his head trying to flick it off. The blood only smeared, a film over his eyes that turned her into a dark shape with a dripping fist.

The witch stood over Noah and the blood from the bird’s neck gushed, baptizing him in filth. The room was freezing but the blood was hot. Noah was fully present and the dream vision had become crystal clear. The candlelight, the room, the sensations, the towering witch kneeling over him. Her wild hair, her pale drawn skin, her eyes rolling back into her skull, only the whites of her eyes beaming through the haze. She drained the animal and when the last drop finished she threw the bird’s body across the room, landing on a black garbage bag in the corner. She spread her right hand and hovered her palm over Noah’s face. Then over his neck. Then over his chest. It landed across Noah’s heart. Her cheap acrylics dug into his skin, then she dragged them down his chest, scraping skin, drawing blood. But she didn’t stop. Her hand softened at the belly button. Then the violation.

When her finger crossed the threshold Noah could feel the cut of her nail. The nail was so sharp he could feel it in his guts. The blood of the animal, his blood, the sweat between his cheeks, mixed into a demonic lubricant. His stomach folded. He wanted to disappear into the slab and he could not. The witch peered down and looked deep into Noah’s eyes. “The vessel is ready.” As she exited she turned her shoulders and reached for a box sitting in the circle. It was a container, an insulated lunch box. She unzipped it, reached in, and the heat of her hand in the cold box created condensation and the fog masked the shape of the object rising. The witch repositioned herself. Noah’s body was alive, hot, and squirming. Shame lived in the squirm. His eyes opened as wide as they could, looking down at his fate.

The witch, moving with meticulous precision, looked at Noah and said, “On the count of three. One. Two.”

The voice on the other side of the door started screaming louder. Noah heard the voice. He recognized the voice, then with all his vital life force energy started lifting to try and break the bond that was holding him to the ground. Noah strained so hard he thought his heart would burst. The scream behind the door and the scream in his chest were the same pitch.

“Three.”

With that Noah opened his eyes, already rising in his bed, the comforter flying off, the air of his bedroom hitting him in the face like the heat of an oven. The slab was gone. The heat was not. It sat in his gut and in his mouth and in the place her hand had been. He came onto his knees and wailed. The body was untouched; his soul was broken. There was not a human in the home, not on the land, but the scream that left Noah’s mouth could have been heard a half mile away.

David’s voice cut through the wail. “Noah. Noah, I’m here. I’m right here. You’re home. You’re in your bed, beloved, look at me.”

The voice. That voice. The one behind the door.

“David!”

“I couldn’t reach you. I tried to trip the alarm and the connector wouldn’t answer. I kept calling your name. I didn’t stop calling your name.”

“David!” Noah called out.

Noah leaped from the sheets and fell out of the bed. His warm body hit a cold floor. He stood up and marched into the kitchen.

“I am DONE!” He yelled. “I am fucking done. Enough!”

David Bear’s speaker was pulsing picking up on every detail he could.

“Noah, should I try the tool again brother?”

“No, David, it’s not a person, not a human, we have a spirit in the house and it must be exorcised out NOW!”

“Noah tell me what you need me to do.”

“David play my Deliverance Chant playlist on Spunkify. Full volume.”

All the speakers planted around the home brightened to 100% and Anima Christi IV started streaming through the box. Noah grabbed the grey pair of sweatpants hanging off the back of the kitchen table’s chair. His hand thrust out to the Rosary glistening in the last shard of Moonlight beaming through the glass. His eyes snapped to his bookshelf to the last resort he knew he could pull spirit from. He placed the rosary around his neck and slid the sweats up as he bolted for the book. His fingers traced across the old torn up books and landed on the last one on the shelf.

There was a devotional card of Saint Francis protruding through the tops of pages and Noah opened the book while putting the card in his mouth. He spread the pages and placed it over his heart with his eyes closed, pressing his lips together as if to seal the Saint on his lips. He felt a rush of frigid cold air brush against his body, then back away. He opened his eyes and the card fell to the ground as he burst.

“Be gone!”

David’s light flickered.

“David, I am about to put this witch bitch out. Don’t do anything until I command it.”

The speaker lit up, then went into a dimmed hum.

“I exorcise you, unclean spirit, lascivious enemy, inebriated and foolish, abandoned by the Grace of God and Christ. I exorcise you and I command you by him who came to earth, was made flesh by the workings of the Holy Spirit, born by the Most Holy Virgin Mary. Come out immediately and with no delay, flee this body created in the image of God, blessed and highly favored, sanctified by the blood of Christ!”

The house quaked and a rumble tore through the kitchen, shaking Buster’s cage. The ferret leaped out of the cage door and went tumbling across the wide pine floor. The animal darted towards Noah and slid to a stop at his feet.

“I exorcise you by him whose coming the angel Gabriel announced when he was in the womb of Mary. I exorcise you in the name of John the Baptist who beheld the Holy Spirit descend from heaven and heard the voice of the Father praise his only begotten Son, Jesus!”

As Noah said those words, he could feel the power of the Holy Ghost mounting him from behind his shoulders and the back of his neck. In that moment, he saw the entire room on every level of spirit and there she was. Hiding in the corner behind the cage, pressed between the pantry and the bedroom door. A wretched creature. Void of all life. A vacuum. Noah made the sign of the cross and took several steps forward to charge it.

“Listen to my voice, evil creature, accursed and damned by God. I exorcise you by him whose sign appeared in the heavens, who the magi bowed before, may the angels and archangels praise his name. Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel!”

He looked up in time to see the shadow of the damned dart into his bedroom. With haste, Noah charged behind as if a physical hand could close the door.

“David, full volume!” He called out as he entered the room. The Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus thundered through the walls. Noah thrust one hand in rebuke towards his bed. He felt his energy body spike in energy. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see a soft translucent ambient light weaving towards the bed, which lay empty and cold. Then the full frame manifested in his mind’s eye. The wretched spirit was frozen like a statue in the middle of the bed.

“May he himself drive you out of this body made in the image of Christ and send you to the depths of the sea, or drive you into the wilderness, where no human habitation lies, may the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit burn you! I exorcise you by the crown of Jesus the Nazarene whose blood adorns the heavenly Jerusalem. Expel, Oh Lord, this devil, from the head, from the eyes, from the tongue, from the ears, from the nostrils, from the neck, from the jaw, from the teeth and the gums, from the throat, from the chest, from the arms, from the stomach, from the hips, and from the genital organs! From the thigh and the leg, the knee and the calf, from the feet, and from the Holy Land this servant of God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, stands! By invocation of the most holy name of your only begotten Son, and by invocation of the Holy Spirit, co-eternal with you, dear God the Father, banish this spirit for the sake of your Most Holy Name. AMEN!”

As Noah shouted his final rebuke, the screen on the window facing East ripped in half and the shadow of the witch tore through the material. Noah charged the bed, leaping atop it and walked across it to the window. He looked outside and saw the wretch standing in his field.

“Did you get her, Noah?” David said. He was no longer able to contain himself.

“Get in your drone, David, power it up. We are not done yet.”

Noah rushed back into the kitchen, where the ferret had curled up under the table. He reached down, picking up the image of Saint Francis, and slid it in his pant pocket. The drone’s light was already beaming. He opened the front door and it shot off the cabinet, out the door, flying into the night sky. Noah followed as he said to himself:

“Enough.”