reading about it. It’s like three A.M. is significant. Dead time, they say.”
I watch as my bedroom door closes. “Do you believe in this stuff?”
“In what, demons?”
“No, not demons, but where they really come from, the whole spiritual thing?”
“I do, Hunter. I have to.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“You have to get this taken care of. We need to call an exorcist.”
I feel dizzy. And cold. And I hear footsteps. Listen to how they seem to go from somewhere near my desk to the foot of my bed and then stop.
I think, “Okay, that’s kind of scary.”
But again, it’s hard to take this as real. It’s hard to take it as really happening to me.
I type out whatever comes to mind: “I’m just really tired all the time. Like more than usual. It’s like I can’t stop thinking. But I’m not really thinking about anything.”
Becca doesn’t reply for a long time. It shows that she’s seen my messages, but she just doesn’t reply.
I start searching for stuff on my own. There’s a lot of stuff out there.
There’s this one guy who had three demons competing for his approval. And another person—she’s kind of hot—who is haunted and documenting the entire thing. She’s already gotten a film option for it.
I watch an interview with her. She’s pale as hell and keeps forgetting the questions they ask her. Her agent or whoever, the person with her, answers for her more often than she can. She looks like shit.
The agent says that the demon has already begun infestation. It’s only a matter of days now. And the interviewer asks if they plan on full possession.
The woman speaks up: “It’s too late for Suz now...”
Kind of weird how she says it too, there’s a sort of monotone way about her voice.
I search for the term “infestation,” and I get thousands of results. No way I’m going through all of them. I click on the one at the top, the wiki entry for the term. It goes on about how infestation is only the first in three “prominent” steps in the circle of demonic possession.
It’s what’s happening to me right now. The haunting part.
Symptoms: the cold spots, the footsteps, the...
What literally just happened: a whisper that sounds like my voice saying my name. Kind of like, if I can explain it, “...unterrrrrrr...” Where the “H” in my name is missing and the end of my name, the “r” runs out long. Like a growl, maybe.
I click around, ending up on a wiki overview of the entire circle.
Three main steps—the first is infestation, which I know. The next is oppression, which is where “the host is broken down” and it looks like a lot of crazy and really scary stuff happens. I start reading about it but—
“Hunter, I left a voice mail with Father James, the best in the entire parish.” Becca goes to church. She goes to church every Sunday. I think she’s gone to a bunch of exorcisms too. Religious people like exorcisms; apparently at the end, after the demon is gone, there’s a feeling of unity in everyone there. I only know this because Becca tells me about it a lot. Never thought much of it until, you know, this started happening to me.
“That’s good,” I reply.
“What else are you experiencing?” Becca asks.
I skim the article about oppression, but maybe it’s better to not read it. I scroll to the top of the wiki entry, reading the last word, “possession.” Three big steps and the final is, like, final. It’s all over by then.
The article says exorcizing the demon is best during stage one, but it is possible up until the end of stage two. But by stage three, the human body is so run-down that an exorcism, “though possible,” ends with “the host in a critical state.” Damn. How do you take that information?
I’m having a hard time even making sense of it.
Demons. They’re all around us. Happens all the time.
But never to “you.” Until it actually does.
And then you’re...
I...
A cold shiver runs through my entire body.
“Hunter?”
I watch Becca blast me with more messages.
I sense it somewhere, watching, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
In bed, I’m able to feel a little bit safe, but three A.M. will arrive, and even if I do sleep, I’ll probably wake up.
Becca says, “Keep chatting with me. I’ll stay up all night.”
And she would and I tell her how much it means to me, but in fewer than a dozen messages, I think I fall asleep because everything goes blank and I don’t wake up until it’s morning.
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