Chapter Three. #2
“Fuckin’ bitches. I’ll fuck you in every hole, I’ll suck you dry and eat your bones. I’ll pop your eyes out and swallow them whole.”
“Begone! In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be gone!” Michelle ordered.
“No power here!” the voice taunted. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female.
Celt pulled Michelle and me back against his body, shielding us. The buzzing and voices intensified.
“Keep your Holy Water to hand,” Michelle whispered.
“Bitches get stitches!”
“And evilness gets sent to hell!” Michelle retorted.
I screamed. I couldn’t help it. Red eyes materialised all around us, and the air thickened, and it became hard to breathe.
The buzzing grew louder, and to my horror, a swarm of bees appeared outside, battering the window glass.
Michelle and I both stepped back. Strangely enough, Michelle looked more curious than scared.
“Chey!” Sunny bellowed from below, and I heard stampeding footsteps.
There were too many pairs of eyes to count, but we were surrounded.
The bedroom door slammed shut, and Celt cursed, rushing over to it.
Michelle miraculously remained calm, yanked her Bible out, and started repeating the Lord’s Prayer while throwing Holy water around us.
Sunny hammered on the door, and Celt pulled at the handle. Loud screams rebounded off the walls, and the voices grew almost deafening, but I still couldn’t make out what they were saying.
“Begone!” Michelle ordered.
Laughter met her words.
“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I order you to cease!” Michelle thundered.
Even I felt the weight of power behind her words.
Suddenly, shockingly, the noise stopped, and everything fell quiet.
The door opened, and Sunny almost knocked Celt off his feet. We all gazed at each other, shocked.
“That escalated quickly,” Callie said.
“Too fast. There’s evil here,” Michelle stated firmly. “Callie, it’s strong and has been steadily building.”
“Demon?” Sunny demanded.
“Unsure, but the entity is powerful, stronger than I imagined. Although it’s certainly malevolent, it was spewing enough bad language at us for that to be a fact,” Michelle mused.
“There were pairs of red eyes everywhere. Surely that’s demonic?” I insisted, still shaken.
“Not necessarily. Did you notice something?” Michelle asked.
“What?” I demanded.
“The bees. In the film, it was a swarm of flies that attacked the priest. This entity has clearly been aware of that and tried to use it to scare us. Historically, there wasn’t a fly attack.
Plus, the red eyes reported were only one pair, not loads.
This thing is familiar with the movie and the book, and is using scenes from them to frighten us,” Michelle said.
“It succeeded,” Celt ground out. His arm wrapped around my shoulders tighter, and he was keeping me firmly against his chest.
“Which is what it intended, and it fed off that fear,” Michelle stated.
“Good for it. I’m sure it choked on mine,” I retorted, and Michelle smiled.
“Chey, you were protected, trust me,” Michelle said. What could I say to that?
Callie
Chey was clearly unsettled, and I couldn’t blame her.
When I reviewed the footage, I’d have been terrified too, but I noticed what Michelle had.
It was using fake elements to frighten people.
The entity was manipulating the situation, and that was something we could handle.
But was it toying with us because it was weak and attempting to draw strength from our fear?
Or was it something else? Maybe it was playing mind games with us, trying to scare us away.
Unfortunately for it, we’d faced demons and worse before. None of us would run at the first showing. I’d done several exorcisms, and one more wouldn’t be a hardship.
“Let’s break for dinner, and then you guys should change location,” I said finally.
“Agreed.”
◆◆◆
After a quick change of scene, Michelle, Chey, and Celt took the bedroom that Sunny and I had been in and had achieved no results. Instead, Sunny and I headed down to the boathouse. That place intrigued me, as water was known to help carry psychic emotions.
We opened the doors and entered. There was no boat moored, which wasn’t unusual as nobody lived here, but there was an overwhelming sense of a presence.
I grabbed the Ovilus and a temperature gauge and took some base readings. Sunny filmed around us and then pulled the SLS camera out.
“Be easier if we could have one of those new cameras that Freddie designed,” he griped.
“Sure would. The temperature is dropping slowly, Sunny,” I replied.
“I just saw movement behind Sunny,” Freddie’s voice cackled over the radio.
Both Sunny and I turned around and squinted into the dark corner.
“Can you describe it, Freddie?” I questioned.
“A shadow moved. I’m reviewing the footage,” she said.
“Hi, I’m Callie, we’re here to talk to you. We’ll always show you the utmost respect. What’s your name?” I asked. I waited a few moments and continued. “This is Sunny—he’s my husband. He rides in a motorcycle club, if you know what that is. I’m a paranormal investigator. What did you do?”
The thermometer shrieked as the temperature dropped further. I shivered slightly.
“Sunny has an SLS camera. It lets us see you. Can you wave at us?”
Sunny moved the SLS camera around, then paused, focusing on the shadows in the corner furthest from us.
“You got something?” I murmured, stepping closer.
“Yeah.”
I leaned over his arm and saw a tall figure standing there. I narrowed my eyes and squinted, but couldn’t make anything out.
“Hi, we can see you. It’s nice meeting you,” I said.
“Fuck off,” the order rumbled through the boathouse, full of menace and threat.
Sunny immediately stepped in front of me.
“Callie!” he roared as a shadow rushed at us. Sunny was shoved violently, and a splash followed. The SLS camera fell to the decking, and Sunny disappeared.
“Sunny!” I yelled and turned on my torch. I heard splashing and headed over to the water.
Sunny was swimming towards the edge, and he reached up, taking hold of the deck. He hauled himself out and shook before grabbing my upper arms.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded as he checked me over.
“No. Are you?”
“Fine, but that was a hell of a shove. It meant business,” Sunny declared as he let go of me and wrung his top out.
I stared at the water. I’d never seen anything like it.
“Callie?” Sunny asked, approaching me.
Wordlessly, I pointed, and Sunny shone the torch onto the inky-dark water. “What the hell?”
“That’s new for me,” I said weakly.
Sunny shook his head as he took the SLS camera and turned it to normal view. He slowly filmed the water as I stood trying to figure out what the fuck had happened.
The water was full of dead fish. It had been empty when we arrived and when Sunny was shoved in. Within less than a minute, dead fish with white eyes were floating there.
“We’re getting out of here,” Sunny ordered. “Now, Callie. Solace can take water samples for us tomorrow.”
“I’ve never seen the like.”
“Come on, baby. We need to regroup with the others and figure out what the hell we do next,” Sunny said.