THE UNDERTAKER and other Macabre Tales

PROOF PART V

The light flickered in the room. Suddenly, the room around them began to tremble. Things rocked and fell off of shelves. A candle on the table tipped over onto its side. Arthur grabbed the armrests on his chair. The woman was saying something. She was talking in Latin. An unholy prayer. Demons liked to imitate the rites of the Church. He remembered hearing that once.

Ross got up from his chair "Stop it! Ward, your trick's gone far enough!"

Ward held his hands up. "I'm not doing anything."

Ross approached the woman. He grabbed her shoulders. Shaking her. The woman smiled at him. Her muscles began to tremble. Then her arms broke the restrains. Her hand found Ross' throat. Ward shot up out of his chair. He tried desperately to pull Ross out of the woman's grasp. She squeezed, then threw both men against the wall. They collapsed in a pile. There was no way this woman was that strong, Arthur thought, to throw two grown men.

"God help us," Arthur said.

"There's no God," the woman declared "There's only me!"

Fernanda helped him. She kneeled by Ross' side as he fell to the floor. Arthur watched helplessly from across the room.

The woman looked right at Arthur, licking her lips one final time before Ward pressed a taser against her neck. The woman convulsed for a moment, then lay still. Smoke and the smell of burning flesh lingered in the air. The roomed stopped shaking, but Arthur still felt uneven on his feet.

Ward held his hand out to help Ross to his feet, but Ross shoved him away. "You're lucky I don't call the cops."

The woman was back to her half conscious state. Her eyes half open. Her head sagging. The two men entered from the other room, removed the woman from the chair, and carried her away.

Then Arthur remembered. The tape. He turned and looked into the camera. But to his surprise he found that the camera had fallen on its side. He picked it up. The lens was shattered. Arthur rewound the tape. To the moment when the room began to shake. The camera had fallen over. He rewound the tape and played it. The woman made claims about them. Speaking in German. All of that was acting. It wasn't proof of a demon. He knew the tape wouldn't hold. All the craziness at the end had happened off camera. But even that could be explained, he thought, they do things like this all the time on movie sets.

He looked at the others and shook his head.

But how did she know? How did she know those things about him? "Well, Ward. You're either the greatest con artist in the world, or you're right."

"I wish it was the first."

Arthur met Fernanda's gaze. His eyes wandered down to her legs, wondering if she really was wearing lingerie. Fernanda clapped her hands in his face, snapping him out of his daze. Maybe it was time for that second date, he thought.

The evening didn't last long after that. Ward offered them drinks. They declined. Everyone was on edge. Ward explained that he was going to send the tape to the Vatican, and have a formal authority inspect the woman, but Arthur never heard what happened. The video wasn't proof. He knew it. But what he saw that night never left his mind. It haunted him. It was enough to make him hang a cross in his home. Him. Arthur. He didn't know why, but just seeing it there comforted him. In case he ever came across something like that again, maybe the cross would protect him. It comforted him, to know that there was something watching over him. Because, logically, even if he would never admit it out loud, if there was darkness like that in the world, there must be light as well.