A Possession Gone Wrong

 

(Filed under: Field Reports — Category 6: Spirits, Miscommunication, and the Unwise Use of Latin)

They called me to Cleethorpes on a Tuesday. They always call on Tuesdays.

The message was brief: “Girl speaking in tongues. Priest fainted. Bring biscuits.”

I arrived at dusk, which is the exact time you shouldn’t arrive anywhere haunted. The sky looked bruised. The house looked guilty. The priest  Father Cavanaugh  looked like a man who’d just remembered he was an atheist.

“She’s in the parlour,” he whispered, crossing himself without conviction. “Whatever’s inside her knows your name.”

Splendid. That’s always how you want to start an evening.

The girl Elspeth Morrow, age fourteen  sat in a floral armchair that had seen too much. Her eyes rolled white, her lips murmured “Invenit me, invenit me…” (“It found me, it found me.”) A shadow pulsed on the wall behind her — not cast by her, but around her, like the light itself had gone off-script.

I set down my recorder and asked, calmly, “And what exactly have we invited in today?”

The voice that came back wasn’t hers. It was older, amused, and deeply unimpressed.

“Sebastian Daark,” it said, “you’ve been sloppy with your wards.”

That got my attention. Demons don’t usually open with professional critique.

The air thickened. Lamps flickered in Morse. The crucifix on the wall turned upside down, then politely corrected itself as if embarrassed. The entity didn’t seem malicious  just bored.

“You’ve done this before,” it hissed.

“Far too many times,” I replied. “Care to state your name for the file?”

It laughed  a dry, papery laugh that sounded like burning theology. Then Elspeth’s chair lifted an inch off the floor.

That’s when everything went wrong.

Cavanaugh decided to improvise. He began reciting a passage from the Book of Tobit, except he’d skipped the Latin pronunciation class and accidentally invoked an entirely different being something administrative.

The temperature dropped. Every candle in the room snuffed out except one, which burned blue and began reciting tax codes. The demon or possibly civil servant — was livid.

“UNAUTHORISED SUMMONING,” it boomed. “FORM 13B NOT FILED.”

The walls rippled. Reality sneezed. Cavanaugh fainted again, which was becoming his primary contribution. Elspeth screamed, her voice layered part human, part something that had once known Latin before the invention of irony.

I did the only thing I could: reached into my coat, pulled out a thermos of holy tea (Earl Grey, slightly oversteeped), and hurled it into the void where the voice was loudest.

Steam, light, then silence.

When I came to, the house was still. Elspeth was asleep, unharmed, snoring softly. The crucifix was right-side up again. The priest was under the table, praying or crying possibly both.

I checked my recorder. The entire tape was blank, except for a faint whisper at the end:

“You filed the wrong report, Daark.”

Which is worrying, because I hadn’t written one yet.

Filed under Possession (Partial Success).

Additional notes: Avoid Cavanaugh. Avoid Tuesdays. Learn proper Latin.

That will have to do.

S. Daark

Postscript: The kettle later boiled itself. I took that as a thank-you.