His feet hurt. His head felt swollen. His hands were dirty, his fingers covered in the metallic stench from his rosary.
The family had been grateful, too busy praising God to thank his servant. The family would never understand, could never fathom, the desperation with which he clung to his faithfulness.
His home was on the outskirts of town. Solitude was expected of godly men and it suited his needs in other ways. But the day, the twelve hours of prayers and supplications, weighed him down. Solitude required distance and the distance lengthened with every day.
The sun was casting the last rays of the day as he crested the hill and looked into the small clearing where his dwelling sat. Warm light bathed his gray home and made it seem, briefly, like it was a refuge. Then the sun dipped behind the ashy clouds and reality was gray again.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside.
And she was waiting.
He hadn't expected to see her so soon, had expected getting an urgent message that there had been another attack before he saw her again. But she was there.
She was hunched in the furthest corner from the door, staring at him with her all white eyes. Even in the dusk, they glowed.
Through the years, each sighting had always shocked him into silence.
Her lank black hair dragged on the ground in greasy strings. Her body was barely clothed in a sooty sheet that hung on her bony body like tent canvas on spikes. She crouched on all fours ready to pounce and sink her spider-leg fingers into his flesh. Each finger was crowned with its own grotesquely long nail, caked in dried blood and dirt.
And her ashen face. Her cheeks were sunken and shadowed. Her white eyes were twin moons in a foggy swamp, hooded by the uneven pitch reeds of her eyelashes. And where her mouth should have been was only scared crisscross flesh that blended into her chin. She was reincarnated without lips. Black smoke furled around her in storm clouds.
She studied his movements as he walked in and shut the door behind him, taking care to bolt and lock it. She watched him move to the stove and begin boiling water for tea. She watched choose his dinner from his selection of stale bread.
Then she fell upon him.
He felt her coldness sink through him like a biting winter torrent. Black fog swirled around him and through him and he felt her anger.
Again! Her voiceless presence demanded. Again? The fog swirled.
"You had no right." He said with practiced authority, though his hands trembled where they gripped the counter.
Her presence rippled in a cackle. 'No right'? 'No right'? Again the fog pressed into him and he shivered. His right hand moved to the rosary around his neck and his lips moved in practiced prayers. You have no right! She screamed through his mind and swirled around him. He closed his eyes and fell to his knees.
"Saint Michael, defend us in 'our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in high places.'" He mumbled, his eyes closed, his fingers gripping the beads.
I belong to you and you belong to me. She cut through his thoughts and disrupted his prayer. To him her voice was clearer than any living human voice. Her voice was a piercing needle through his ear that punctured all other sounds.
His eyes were sealed shut and still her mouth-less face shone back at him from within his eyelids.
"Come to the assistance of men whom God has created in his likeness and who He has redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil."
Tyranny! She scoffed and he trembled. You hypocrite! You are the evil in this world.
"The Holy Church venerates you as her guardian and protector; to you, the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into heaven."
Suddenly, she stilled. The black fog collected into her physical manifestation and she crouched on the stone floor in front of him. He sensed the stilling and dared to open his eyes and behold her.
I will never be led to heaven. What have you done with the one soul entrusted to you? Her eyes widened in fascination. Don't you want me to have a voice? In that moment, her eyes were cold and broken and his heart ached.
"I can't let you."
Am I not wonderfully made? The black fog gathered around her. You cannot stop me. She tilted her head to one side. You may cast me out but you can never cast me from your life.
He closed his eyes, unable to reject the truth of her words.
I am your blood and I cry out! She gathered herself up into a storming mass above his head, contained only by the ceiling. I will be heard! Then she rushed through the closed window, shattering it in her exodus.
He closed his eyes as cold tears trickled down his face and splattered the stone floor. He would wait for the call. He wondered whether it would come that night or the following morning. Another possession, another exorcism. Another long walk in service of a thankless life. A walk lasting the rest of his life.
