The Harrowing (19 page)

Cain stepped forward to the table, dipped his fingers in the bowl of blood.

He turned to the east and traced a pentagram in the air in front of him. Then he extended his hands in front of him, palms outward, clenched his hands, and pulled them suddenly open, as if pulling aside a set of curtains. He called out fiercely, “
We open the portal of fire!
”

Fire jumped in the hearth, blazing upward with a roar. Robin and Lisa gasped. All around the room, the candles flared up. Even the light in the Coleman lantern leapt, beating against the glass.

Martin started to spit and writhe in the chair, bellowing inhumanly. Lightning cracked in the sky outside, lighting up the corners of the blankets covering the windows.

Cain and Lisa stood still, stupefied. Robin stared around her at the rush of light, the live fire.

She realized Cain was looking at her, waiting for her to continue. She forced herself to unfreeze, to move. She stepped forward to dip her fingers into the bowl of blood.

She turned to the south, traced a pentagram in the air, and called out clearly, “
We open the portal of air!
”

She extended her hands in front of her, clasped them, and pulled them apart, as if ripping aside a set of curtains.

A wind rushed through the room, a roar in her ears…as if a huge door had opened to the elements. Robin had to brace her feet on the floor and lean forward against the wind. She saw Cain and Lisa doing the same. She was dizzy, almost deaf from the howling.

It’s working
, she thought in wild disbelief.
We’re doing
something…

Martin twisted, convulsing, moaning in pain.

Cain called out over the howling of the wind. “Lisa!”

Lisa struggled forward through the wind, dipped her fingers in the bowl of blood, and turned to the west. She was shaking as she traced the pentagram, but her voice was strong.

“
We open the portal of water!
”

She extended her hands in front of her and pulled them apart.

Outside, thunder boomed, shaking the sky. Rain started to fall in a torrent, driving into the ground. The rapping started again, intensifying. The Qlippah bucked in its chair, howling with the wind.

Robin felt herself start to go numb with the unreality of it, her mind almost pleasantly detaching from the bizarreness around her. From far away, she caught a glimpse of Lisa’s face, white as a sheet but abstracted, puzzled….

It’s shock
, she thought,
We’re all going into shock
.

Robin forced her mind back into consciousness, shouted, “
Lisa!
You guys!”

Lisa looked at her, startled, focusing.

Cain jolted back to awareness, shot Robin an admiring look. “
Come on!
” He stepped behind Patrick’s chair, and the two girls joined him. They turned Patrick’s chair around to the north, and all three dipped their fingers into the bowl of blood. They all put one hand on Patrick’s shoulder and used their other hand to trace the pentagram in the air. Simultaneously, they shouted to the air, “
We open the portal of earth!
”

All three made the gesture of pulling curtains open.

Beneath them, the ground started to shake, rumbling as if in an earthquake.

Lisa gasped, stumbled. Robin fought for her own balance, grabbed Lisa’s arm to steady her. The Qlippah shrieked with laughter.

Cain shouted at them through the chaos, “Help me. Get him around.”

He grabbed the back of Patrick’s chair with his good arm. The girls leapt forward and the three of them strained to turn Patrick back to the table. The earth rolled and shook beneath them.

Cain pulled back and shouted, “Back to your points!” They all stumbled to their places on the pentagram and faced Martin, teetering for balance on the shaking floor. Cain picked up the bowl of blood and hurled the contents at Martin, splashing him with blood. The Qlippah screamed with rage.

Through the wind and rumbling, the three of them started to chant. “We banish you with fire. We banish you with air. We banish you with water. We banish you with earth.”

The Qlippah shouted over them. “You can’t get rid of me. I came from
you
, Robin. You called me and I came.”

Robin flinched, but she kept chanting with Lisa and Cain, eyes locked on Martin in the firelight.

“We banish you with fire. We banish you with air. We banish you with water. We banish you with earth.”

Martin’s gaze burned into Robin, the Qlippah shining through them, rippling on his face. “You can’t get rid of me, because I’m
you
. Your envy. Your fury. Your hatred.”

Robin faltered, looked into Martin’s bottomless eyes. The Qlippah smiled.

“You hated her. You wanted her dead. I made her dead.
I am you
.”

Robin cried out in anguish.

And at that hesitation, all three were suddenly blown backward by some immense force. Robin felt her breath knocked out of her. She was lifted and hurled; there was a crash and blinding pain.

The three of them slammed into the wall and slid to the floor.

Robin lay against the baseboard, bright lights swirling in her head, her skull throbbing from the blow. Beside her, Lisa was holding her arm, staring down at it. It dangled at a sickening angle.

Martin started to laugh wildly, the hideous insect voice of the Qlippah. The rapping raced through the ceiling. The walls bulged out sickeningly, like flesh; the ceiling cracked. White flakes were falling; Robin stared at the powdery dusting on her arm, mesmerized.
It’s snowing
, she thought in vague disbelief.
The roof must have…split open
….

Cain pushed himself up to sitting and grabbed Robin’s arm, twisted her around to face him. “It’s not working,” he shouted over the chaos. “We have to bail.”

Outside, thunder boomed, shaking the building. The Hall groaned as if the entire structure was coming loose from its foundation. Something like rocks began to thud on the floor around them.

In a daze, Robin looked up and realized the ceiling was raining down in flakes and chunks around them.

Robin turned and stared across the pentagram at Martin, who was still tied to the chair. His bloody face was twisted with glee, the Qlippah rioting across his features. The spirit writhed inside his body, laughing at them through the chaos of elements. It shrieked at her. “I am you. I am you. I am you.”

Robin screamed out, “
No
.”

Cain staggered to his feet and lunged for the fire ax on the floor. He jerked it up, drew back his arm to swing the blade at Martin’s head.

Robin leaped to her feet and seized Cain’s arm, fingernails digging into his flesh. “
No
. Wait—”

Cain looked at her frenzied face and fell back. She advanced on the Qlippah, her voice raw.

“You
lie
. I have friends. I have love. I have life.”

Light
.

Her mind flew through what she knew. The Qlippoth had broken because they could not hold the light. They couldn’t hold life.

Light.

Love.

Life.

She stared at the hideous thing in the chair. Martin was alive in there. If they could reach his being, fill him, love him…

She grabbed Cain’s hand. “The Qlippoth shattered because they couldn’t hold the light. They can’t bear light.” Cain looked back at her, questioning. Robin faced the Qlippah, braced herself against the wind ripping around them, and spoke aloud.

“Martin, I know you’re in there.”

The Qlippah cackled. “Martin’s
dead!
Cowboy’s
dead!
You’re all going to die!”

Robin took another step forward against the wind, forced herself to stare into the mad, demonic face. “I know you’re in there, Martin. Come back to us. We’re here for you…We’re here.”

Cain was suddenly beside her, looking at Martin’s face intently. “Come out, Martin. Come back.”

Robin spoke with him. “You’re not alone, Martin. You have us. We’re here. We love you. Come to us. Come back.”

Lisa pushed herself to her knees, wincing as she stood. She stepped beside Cain and Robin, holding her useless arm, and called against the wind.

“Please come back, Martin....”

Without realizing, without meaning to, the three of them spoke it at once.

“
Martin
.”

And for a fleeting second, Martin’s own face flickered through the mad visage of the Qlippah. His eyes, desperately unhappy, stared up into theirs.

Robin jolted, then called to him urgently. “Martin. It’s in your body, Martin. It’s
your
body. Send it out.”

Cain took up the call, overlapping her, “Send it out, Martin.”

Lisa’s eyes blazed and she ground out, “Send it the fuck out.”

All three of them shouted, “
Send it out!
”

The Hall shook to its foundations. In the chair in front of them, Martin spasmed, choking, flesh and mind rebelling against the cruel invasive spirit. And then Martin’s features emerged from the horrible slack formlessness of the Qlippah’s face. His own eyes met Robin’s in desperate appeal, and unfathomable courage, and Martin gasped out in his own voice, “Leave…me….”

A terrible struggle raged in the flesh of Martin’s face…human features racked with a rippling evil, nerves and muscles contorting with the battle.

A whoosh of energy rose from Martin’s body, invisible but palpable. Robin froze, overwhelmed with the sheer force of it. She saw Cain and Lisa staring upward, paralyzed. The energy ripped through the air and cycloned around the room, gusting through the flames in the hearth, shaking the windows, blowing the curtains into a frenzy, overturning everything in its path.

Robin held tightly to Cain. He grabbed Lisa and they clung to one another as furniture rattled and jumped around them. Above them, the ceiling beams groaned.

Lisa was screaming. Robin couldn’t tell if she was, too.

The energy spiraled, raging around the room. The couch flipped over, and books exploded out of the shelves, pages flying. The mirror shattered above the hearth, raining glass.

In the midst of the tumult, Robin heard a small, frightened voice.

“What’s happening?”

She whipped around. In the chair, Martin sat with eyes wide open, staring in terror at the thundering chaos around him.

Robin gasped, fixed on his face. “Martin?”

He looked back at her, small and lost. “What’s happening? Where are we?”

His voice was hoarse, but the horrible alien sound was gone. Robin stared at him, hardly daring to hope. There was no sign of the mad gleam of the Qlippah.

Martin’s eyes fell on Patrick’s dead body tied across from him. He cried out, “Oh my God…what’s happening?”

A ceiling beam split and crashed down toward the floor. Cain barely leapt out of the way in time.

Robin ran to Martin, squeezed his shoulders. “Hold on. Don’t let it back in.”

The energy whooshed around the room, then blew straight against the table, flipping it, crashing it against the wall. The four of them struggled against the blast, screaming. Patrick’s dead body jumped with the force of it. Glass blasted inward as all the windows suddenly burst, showering them with shards of glass. Rain gusted in from the outside; lightning branched in the sky. A guttural, disembodied howl of rage tore through the room. The energy cycloned, shaking the windows, making the fire blaze up, shredding the curtains, spiraling papers and plaster and broken furniture up into a funnel of black wind and rage.

And then it was as if the cyclone had been sucked into space. Suddenly, everything was still.

The silence was deafening, like a ringing in Robin’s ears. The four of them looked around them, stunned.

The lounge was wrecked, broken furniture and glass everywhere. Curtains billowed inward as rain blew in from the smashed windows.

Lisa gulped out, her voice tiny. “Is it…over?”

Cain took a deep breath. “It’s gone…I think….”

Then Robin felt her heart leap wildly in her chest as Patrick’s eyes suddenly opened.

The corpse jerked up to a sitting position, grinning wolfishly. The dead voice grated. “Did…you…miss me…children?” The dead eyes were black, fathomless.

Lisa stared at him, her face white. He waggled his tongue at her and she bolted back.

Patrick’s voice was slow and thick, his face distorted, the muscles slack and grotesque as the Qlippah tried to speak through dead vocal cords. “Big…boy…woudn’…mind….”

Lisa and Robin backed away, shaking.

Behind them, Martin gasped out, “Burn him.”

Cain whipped around, staring at him. Martin looked up at Cain from where he was still tied in the chair. “Fire. We have to drive it out.”

Cain’s face tightened. “Cut Martin loose, quick.” With his good hand, he fumbled his pocketknife out of his pocket.

Robin leapt to take the knife, then sliced through Martin’s ropes with the blade. She helped Martin stand shakily and the four faced Patrick.

The corpse jerked spasmodically in the chair, the Qlippah trying to work the dead muscles. It strained against the ropes, bellowing, “NOOO. NOOOOOO….”

Martin spoke loudly over it. “Burn the body. Drive it out. Fire is pure light.”

“
NNNNNNOOOOOO!
”

Patrick’s body writhed grotesquely. The chair started to rattle on the floor. Darkness seemed to gather around it.

Beside Robin, Cain gasped in disbelief. “Oh shit.”

The three of them watched, stupefied, as the chair rose slowly into the air.

Martin shouted, “Burn him! Do it!”

Cain spun and grabbed the Coleman lantern, from where it lay overturned and dark in the debris on the floor. He twisted the lamp open and threw the fuel over Patrick, soaking the corpse’s clothes.

Robin spotted the matches on the mantel and grabbed for them, but then she hesitated, looking toward Lisa.

Lisa stepped forward, staring at the writhing corpse above them. Her voice was deadly and sure. “Kill it.”

Robin struck a match, ignited the matchbook, and threw it at Patrick.