“Be strong, child,” came Millicent’s words.
I could only fake a nod and hold my bladder, and wait for what I knew was coming.
I had my arms raised before me, before I even knew what I was doing. Truth was, I really didn’t know what I was doing. Yes, I had mad psychic skills, but could I always trust them on a moment’s notice? I didn’t know. I hadn’t used them that often.
Still, I felt the energy crackle around me. In particular, it came from around my hands. I could see what others couldn’t: white flames surrounding my hands. No, they didn’t burn my hands, and they weren’t really flames. This was raw energy...and it was waiting for me to use it.
But was it of any use against a demon?
I didn’t know, but Archibald Maximus had seemed to think so...and that was good enough for me. But what he couldn’t predict was the fear that gripped me. Nor could he predict the unpredictable: the rage of a demon.
“Steady,” said Millicent. But now, her words were only background noise.
The house creaked and shook and groaned, and I heard wood crack and pop from all around. Windows even shattered. The entity truly seemed everywhere and anywhere.
Still, a darkness was forming in the hallway.
Filling the hallway.
Coming toward us.
I stepped back...and felt the heat of the ring of blue fire behind me.
“Easy, Allie,” whispered Ivy.
From the hallway, which began across the living room, appeared a black mass. It was perhaps blacker than anything I had ever seen in all my life. Blacker than a moonless night. Blacker than any shadow or creation by man. The thing was devoid of all light. It was the antithesis of light.
I heard myself say, “Oh, my God.” And I meant it.
Ivy said something, too, but I missed it. Instead, I took another step back, and nearly singed my pants leg. Heat blasted me from behind, while a living shadow moved toward me from in front.
It poured out of the hallway slowly, billowing into the big living room. It could have been a dust cloud or fog, had either been blacker than black.
The black fog coalesced, swirling slowly, and then faster and faster, until it took on the vague shape of a person. It stood, perhaps, eight feet tall.
This isn’t happening, I thought. No way is this happening.
“Easy, child.” Millicent was my rock right now.
Two red eyes opened in the region of the head. They focused on me, and now I couldn’t be entirely sure that I didn’t pee myself.
“Oh, fuck,” said Ivy behind me, pretty much echoing my thoughts.
Horrific images flooded my mind. I saw death and blood and corpses. I saw torture and fire and rotting flesh. I saw scurrying rats and snakes and the fearsome eyes of an enraged demon.
The images I knew, were from It.
As the shadow regarded me, I heard slow footsteps, then the sound of clapping. The clapping and footsteps echoed down through the hallway, and they somehow seemed more amplified than they should have been.
As the footsteps drew closer, and the clapping resounded seemingly everywhere at once, a human figure stepped through the tall shadow, which dissipated in a puff of wispy black smoke.
The figure was, of course, the Englishman.
Billy Turner.
He continued clapping as he stepped deeper into the big living room, his features awash in blue light. “Now, that was a smashing entrance, was it not?”
But, of course, it sounded nothing like Billy. Gone was the English accent, replaced by something harsh and guttural and filled with mock humor.
“Billy,” I said, but I knew it was a waste to address him by his human name. There was no human expression on that contorted, stretched face. His eyes were too wide. The smile was too big. Nostrils were too flared. Eyebrows were too high. It was as if Billy Turner had been caught doing exactly what all of our mothers had warned us against: making funny faces and having them stay that way.
His eyes, I noted, didn’t move in their sockets. At least, I didn’t think they did. As he took in both me and Ivy, he turned his head slowly from side to side, rather than shifting his eyes. It was all...so...damn...weird.
He was totally and completely possessed. Of that, I was sure. Billy Turner the Englishman, the human, was long gone, and that saddened me greatly.
Billy lifted his head, and seemed to sniff the air. “Aw, I sense great fear and sadness. Music to my ears, so to speak.” He stepped deeper into the big room, and scanned the furniture that had been pushed aside, then his head swiveled, taking in the blue ring of fire.
“It looks like to me that there’s some kind of ceremony going on.” He sniffed the air. “I smell vervain and mugwort. Nasty stuff.” He turned his wide-eyed gaze back on me. So far, I was certain he had not blinked. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you were trying to get rid of me. Now, that’s not very nice.”
I finally found my voice. “Leave the house, Billy. This is between the demon and us.”
Billy, with his raised eyebrows and wrinkled forehead, regarded me for a moment, as black, wispy snakes continued coiling around him. Around and around and through him. “Yes, I can see that I will have to deal with you, in much the same way that I dealt with my nosy neighbor. She’s behind me in the kitchen, rotting and putrefying. In fact...” He paused and sniffed the air. “I can smell her now. My favorite aroma, if you will. Death and rot.”
“You’re a fucking piece of shit,” said Ivy suddenly, stepping forward. “I’m going to enjoy watching you rot in hell.”
Billy swiveled his head in Ivy’s direction. “This one has spirit, I see. She will make a fine plaything. But first—” Billy reached behind him and removed a knife that might have been stained with blood, although the flickering blue flames didn’t quite give off enough light to know for certain. “First, I have to destroy this plaything.”
Billy brought the knife up to his own throat.
And slit it straight across.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I screamed as Billy’s head flopped forward, and he dropped to his knees.
I rushed forward, but a blast of cold wind, followed by a swirling shadow, literally threw me backward. I tumbled head over ass, and ended up in a heap along the far wall. I looked up from the floor in time to see the once-frozen expression on Billy’s face replaced by one of shocked horror. A human expression. Billy reached up to his damaged neck, then pitched forward, choking and gagging, and then lay still.
“Oh, fuck!” screamed Ivy. “Oh, fuck.”
I found my feet and located the swirling mass which now hovered briefly over Billy. It seemed to be gathering itself, solidifying. The red eyes now returned, and looked directly at me.