He Is & He Was

Part 8: The Church Of Exorcisms

My brain was cracking out of my skull. Pulsating like a heart beating during a heart attack, sickening me and numbing me in a stroke-like fashion.
Children's laughter and singing filled my ears and I couldn't get rid of it, my ear drums thudded and rung as the voices only grew louder and louder as I walked down the stair case.
The stairs looked more narrow than I remembered.
Francis was down in the entrance with the elderly woman, both of them sitting on the stale yellow sofa that was known as The Waiting Sofa when we were children. We would have to sit on it for either waiting for our future family or when we were being returned like a broken toy. I only sat on it once and that was when I was signing my forms to leave for Weston.
Weston.
That's where I went after living here. I went to college and lived in the dorms with others whose faces were still smudged in my memories; Vincent was there.
That's where we were reunited. I remember.
"Francis," I called out to her as I missed one of the steps, my heart racing as I did so, "I need to get out of here." I mumbled.
I looked at her as she turned to me but a bright flash made me lose focus on her and her calming complexion.
My vision grew hazy and wobbly, until I saw her.
I saw Hilda.
Her long, curly black hair that grew a deep brown colour in the summer, her clothes just as dark in colours but male like with her arguments to wear my trousers rather than a woman's frock once we grew up and left the orphanage. Her eyes were a gingery hazel with deep markings around her eyelids like mine, her pale white skin allowed her pastel pink lips to shine as they forever remained slightly open as I spoke to her.
"Hilda." I called her out as she sat were Francis once did but I didn't acknowledge the dramatic irony.
The church now clean and well decorated, filled with a golden lighting from the sunlight, while moths of unknown species flew around; tiny patterned skulls printed into their fat fluffy bodies.
I grew hesitant to walk any further down the stairs, but Hilda made me struggle down the steps slowly with her sweet smile and my desperation to talk to her once more.
She watched me with her glassy eyes that gave her a look of a doll figurine.
I staggered to her but not due to illness but suspicion of what she was and how she was here. I stalked around her slowly which creaked the wood beneath me, sniffing the air around her while the atmosphere was dull and so non-existent that I couldn't even sense anything bad.
"Sit." She said, her Scottish accent fading but clearly still there.
I grew unemotional for my own benefits and sat beside her but I didn't let our legs or toes touch one another on the small sofa.
I looked into her face, seeing every clear pore and dent in her cheeks and the one eyelash that was just about to fall into her big eyes, "Why are you here?" I asked.
She smiled, showing me her teeth that no longer had fangs; they were just fleshy gaps. Her fangs were pulled out so long ago but I can't remember why, I just remember as a child it was funny to hear her talk because it gave her a lisp once she grew frustrated and hot at my rebellious ways.
"Why are you here?" She repeated.
"To remember." I answered while I slouched down from my usual high posture once I realised Hilda didn't do it, she wasn't raised or a worker in the higher classes so she didn't walk, sit or talk like me anymore. We had grown apart after so many years of being fake siblings for each other's sake of sanity.
She lost her smile and tutted at me, "Why do you want to remember this?" The church suddenly shook but she seemed unfazed by it.
The walls twitched and shivered, making dust fall from the the corners and ridges around the lights which shook side to side slowly. The glass in the windows vibrated but only for the shortest time.
"I have to find out why this happened to me and who did it." I pointed at the markings on my head but she wasn't concerned by them.
"But you already know who did it. Don't you?" She spoke just as the room growled and shuddered once more, this time much more aggressive.
Wood snapped in the walls and holes grew wide in the floor and sky.
"No," I paused, "I don't."
"Oh dear brother, what have you gotten yourself into?" She sighed as she shook her head slightly, staring into my eyes with a sort of overwhelming sadness that I didn't know she could feel.
I went to speak but my voice was gone, I strained my vocals but still nothing came out of me.
I was forced into a darkness, falling backwards into a well as she only watched me get smaller and smaller as I continued to fall.
I felt the air rushing through my hair and clothes, getting harsher and more vicious as my speed grew. Where was I falling? How was I falling? Why was I falling?
I finally hit a flooring but all that was around me was blackness.
I squinted and tried to move my body as it stung and cracked, my ears ringing in a high pitched tone after my head slammed into the ground, making it hurt even more than it was in the bathroom.
I managed to sit up but my body tried hard to push me back down to the ground, as if it was trying to force me through a tiny crack like I was an octopus.
I was alone but it didn't feel like it, I could feel millions of eyes staring at me but no bodies were belonging to them.
A yellowed light turned on far away from me.
It lit up only a small circle of this world and flickered the more I stared at it. An uncomfortable looking wooden chair sat lonely in the middle of the circle of light.
I knew that chair.
That was the chair that me and Malphas were departed in. The chair of exorcisms and murders.
Whispering begun once I got up onto my feet, the black world tilted one way and then the other as I stumbled around with my head that felt like fingernails were clawing to get inside of my skull and squeeze my brain. The more I got closer to the chair, fuzzy figures begun to appear while the whispering became loud heavy chanting. The language unknown to me.
Once I was a few metres away, I come to realise it was me in the chair. My young self was held down by two nuns in black while another stood in front of me with a priest but hid behind him as he held a silver cross close to my face which was streaming with tears of boiled blood.
I couldn't recall this memory even when I watched it. I knew I was a victim of exorcism but the memory was not with me, I can't remember if it hurt, if I was fine afterwards or even if I was a successful exorcism. After all, as Raven I still had a part of a demon left within me no matter what they did to me. I was born half human and half demon so I suppose they couldn't split us without death being the only answer.
My child self screamed in mercy but I didn't speak; I never spoke. I didn't in this orphanage as I knew anything I would say would be used against me. They called me a Mute Child but in fact I was the smartest and left when I had the chance. Only then did I talk. Only then did I say good bye and run away to Weston to never see these buggers again. I was smart and didn't fight back with violent unholy words.
"Let the lords child cleanse you my son," the man spoke, "Let your mother take you," He turned to face me, leaving my child self alone.
He stopped shoving the cross onto the skin of the child's cheek, that was sizzling with its holiness. He stood up but continued to keep eye contact with me through the process until he grinned like a mad man, his teeth yellowed and rotted with holes, "Let mother take you!"
He ran at me, making me cover my face like a coward even when I didn't want to commit to fear. But he was gone as soon as he tried to attack me.
I looked around helplessly, in hope to see an exit or something that would help me fight away these nightmares. My heartbeat was all I could hear now, it's quick beating being echoed and banging off the elongated walls that contained me. I wonder how big this room really was.
"Raven?"
I twisted myself around quickly to the comforting voice, my vision blurred sideways as if someone smeared their fingers through a thick cooling gravy.
My eyes tricked me but I fell for the illusion. Vincent stood far away from me but I could still see his beauty mark from where I remained sewn to the flooring. He looked alive and well but he seemed to be scared which wasn't like him, unless it was his sister coming to fight him. Was it him or just my imagination?
"Raven?" He stared at me but continued to call for me, "Raven? You need to go," her suddenly said, "Mother's coming."
Before I could recollect what he said, a foot of a giant stepped ahead of him, making me lose vision of the man I had already lost numerous amount of times in my stupid illusions.
The shoe was a weak leather that wrinkled and swayed to the sides due to the lack of structure, a veil of a dress hid the rest of the legs that descended into the dark rooftop.
The creature finally bent down, revealing the clothing of a nun bloodied on the pure white shirt while a mashed up soup of vomit and black gunk splattered across its covered stomach, that was bulging with faces of my lost brothers and sisters in a pregnant womb. They screamed at me but I could hear nothing, as their fingernails stretched out the nuns skin beneath the woolly dress.
The face was pale but was more alive than I. The mouth was so full of yellowing daggers that it couldn't even close it, its eyes were sunken in and crying making it clear that even this form of living was painful for the creature. It was in pain but it kept on surviving.
It gargled bubbles of iron, as it tried to speak but it gave up until it begun to choke. It's throat slowly lifted up a thickened Adam's apple that continued to rise up and up until it no longer existed. It regurgitated whatever was finally caged in it's mouth, making me look away in disgust while it remained in a thick coating of blood and mucus.
The monster continued to heave but nothing more came out so I soon gained the strength to look.
The vomit was a person, a demon that looked like Malphas. He lay in complete exhaustion and breathed heavily as he only stared at me, the goo oozing off of his body and evaporated as soon as it touched the flooring.
"Kill her," his chest heaved up and down, "Kill mother."