The Exorcist

"Of all the people I know, you're the one who's closest to a priest."

"I'm an Atheist."

"But you went to the seminary."

"Twelve years of religious education is not 'the seminary'. Also: I'm an Atheist."

I'm still fuzzy on the details. A friend of a friend had recently discovered Jesus in the born again tradition. Unfortunately, her mother was of some form of Neo-Pagan stripe or Satanist or something and was sending all manner of lovely trinkets and reading material to her Grandchildren. Now the house had demons. They're like mice except incorporeal. A desperate cry was placed for a specialist, and that's how it worked its way into my life. You see, you need a Catholic to get rid of vampires and demons. Even a lapsed one will do, apparently. My friend is compassionate and open-minded, to say the least, and she assumed that it would be easier to badger me into putting on a show while we removed the objectionable material than it was to get an actual Priest. She was probably right about that.

"This is blasphemy most foul, you know."

"You're an Atheist. Now put on the shirt. And where are you hiding your rosaries and medals?"

"Why do you just assume I kept them?"

"Where are they?"

"They're in a small box at the bottom of that drawer over there."

I hadn't opened that box in years. Riffling through it I found thirteen medals devoted to various saints and Popes held together with a safety pin, one broken rosary, two intact rosaries, a small plastic Infant of Prague statue, a small government issue pewter Mary statue in a water proof case, a small gold angel pin, one Mary medal on a chain, a similar Saint Albert the Great medal on a chain, and a large tarnished silver cross. I received one of the intact rosaries for first communion and the Saint Albert medal for Confirmation. Those stayed in the box. I tucked the Infant of Prague statue into my pocket, put on the tarnished cross, and looped the other rosary around my left wrist. She'd dressed me in a black turtleneck. Looking into the mirror I had to admit I did look like a priest. Sort of: I was missing the collar.

I walked over to my bookshelf and pulled my prayer book. A part of me knew I'm going to eventually go to hell for playing a part in this farce. Another part of me knew I'm going to be dragged into the depths of hell this very evening by a legion of howling demons for having the hubris to play a part in this farce. Another desperate part of me was just repeating "Demons do not exist and hell is just make-believe." Over and over and over again. Truth be told, I was utterly terrified but I couldn't bring myself to show it.

"I picked up some props too. Here."

She handed me a small gold sunburst case built around a circular watchglass at the center and a hole at the bottom of it for it to rest atop a pole. It was made specifically to display the small, desiccated, unidentifiable clump inside of it. I recognized it immediately and I felt a sudden new terror streak through me.

"Jesus Fucking Christ!"

"What?"

"That's a reliquary. Where the holy hell did you get that? Did you break into a Cathedral?"

"I found it at the Antique store. Why? What is it?"

"It's a... Jesus Christ. Nevermind. What else do you have in that goddamned bag?"

With relief, I found the only other thing in the bag was a homemade aspergillums. I dug up a small frosted white water bottle and I drew a crux orthodoxa on the front of it with permanent marker. As I filled it from the bathroom sink I couldn't help but remark, "If demons are real we are so fucked it isn't even funny."

We drove out to Black Forrest. "Forrest" is a misnomer. It's actually a large expanse filled with raggedy, stunted spruces and twisted scrub oak. When we finally arrived at the house I saw that it was a custom job built in a frontier log cabin style at the border of the forest and the prairie. It was two stories with a high peaked roof. The red gravel of the driveway crunched beneath our tires as we drove up. My friend hopped out of the car and walked up to the porch as I parked next to a broken-down tool shed. As I walked up my friend and her friend were hugging. Her friend had a tear-stained face that said she hadn't slept in a month. She looked at me, and I made the sign of the cross and dipped my head in a bow.

"Thank you for coming, Father."

"I'm not a Priest." At that my friend shot me a glare that said I'd be wishing for the glorious splendor and hospitality of hell in a few moments. "I'm actually a monk from the rule of Iscariot. We specialize in these types of things." Two birds with one stone. That explains the lack of the collar and the cross.

No priest would wear this cross.

"Oh."

"Please take me to the material."

We walked up two flights of stairs, and then she pulled down a folding attic stairwell. We entered the attic. It was lit by a single bare bulb. We walked over to a central stack of books four feet high that was also surrounded by a sizeable pile of other books and... things. I took the reliquary out of my pocket and set it on the top of the central stack of books, bowed my head in a seeming prayer, dropped my voice an octave and in a rough parody of a gregorian chant I started a rapid monotone recital of all the Latin phrases I knew.

"Deus ex mechina illegitimis non carborundum ipsum ipsum lorem ipsum dolor sit amet aurora borealis nemo me impune lacessit. Veni vidi vici..."

Behind me I heard a hushed and broken conversation that mostly consisted of fragments of "I'm sorry...", "...can't stay..." "...oppressive..." "not strong enough" interspersed with wracked sobs. She needed time to put her shit together, and I was regretting feeding into her obviously deep-rooted internal battle. I spun around on my heel, dipped my glorified paintbrush into my bottle of tap water, and flicked it in her general direction.

"Go in peace my child, God's work will be done here."

My friend walked that poor woman to her car and she took off for God only knows where, to fight her own demons. Once my Friend returned we got down to the business at hand: Bickering and sniping at each other.

"Go in peace my child?"

"Fuck you, just fuck you. Now what the hell are we going to do with all this shit?"

"Burn it? It is evil isn't it?"

"That one's a Dungeons and Dragons supplement."

"But this dagger has a pentagram on it."

"This woman is insane. You say they let her raise children? "

"Handbook of Plant Alchemy? That could be witchcraft."

"Holy shit, an Arms and Equipment compendium!"

"Could you please stop geeking out for just a moment?"

"That's... yeah, that one's a copy of the Hobbit. We're not burning these books."

"Fine, we'll bag up all the books and drop them off at the used bookstore. We dump everything else at the dump."

"Yeah, we'll just dump off a bag full of knives and satanic-looking paraphernalia at the dump. That will go over well. We can probably unload some of this shit on that shop in Manitou."

"Is that a chicken foot on a lanyard?"

"Yep. Strong juju there. Hey, I found a Book of Shadows, you can burn this one."

Sorting through the heap we found clumps of sage for smudging, several books on herbalism, A couple books by Anton La Vey, quite a few pendants, many more books about Wicca, an antler, several gnostic writings, and dozens upon dozens of crystals and various other rocks. Mixed in were a random hodgepodge of books about everything from aliens to xylomancy, a complete set of Harry Potter books, and quite a few role-playing manuals to boot. We managed to bag up all the trinkets and dump most of the books into my trunk in short order.

I was leisurely reading my expropriated copy of the second edition Ravenloft campaign setting (to the victor go the spoils!) when we heard a car pulling up the driveway. It was show time again. I looked up. The only thing in the corner of the attic was my tiny statue of the Infant of Prague. It's the little touches that make all the difference. I came down the stairs flicking water with all the grace I could muster. You could sense the woman was now composed and at peace, and I briefly considered running out the front door screaming about hellspawn and working up a good froth around the mouth as I took a dive to the ground while fighting off unseen assailants. Instead, I lead our three-person group in a couple short prayers and took every opportunity to splash everyone with water.

Afterwards my friend and I managed to unload most of the crap in my car on various local shops and random people on the street. "What can I do to make sure you walk home with this here book about the hermetic order of the golden dawn tonight?", "If you take this tome filled with forbidden occult lore I'll throw in this lovely knife! Used to be owned by a little old lady. She only used it to kill things on Black Sundays." Then we used the funds to get hammered. I laughed at the fears I had earlier in the day. It must be hardwired into my brain now. It was all ridiculous bogeymen past down from generation to generation. That night I put the prayer book back on the shelf and I put my rosary and cross back in the box along with my new dried chicken limb on a lanyard. I'm an atheist, demons do not exist, and hell is just make-believe, but sometimes even I need strong juju.