Alacrimia | √

Chapter Eleven

The crowd sat back in their seats and watched the village native doctor and his pages set up the rites for the exorcism. Nobody stood up to defend the scared, small girl bound and on her knees in the middle of the white chalk circle.

It was an uncommon occurrence for a child to be exorcized; it was usually the old women that were found out as witches.

The pages finished setting the oil lamps and other miscellanea according to the rules of Feng Shui. They all stepped back and let the herbalist take their place in front of the girl, forming an outer circle. The said man started to chant in a strange tongue and sprinkle a thick, black liquid inside the chalk-line — and on the girl, in the process.

Eniiyi, head bowed, surreptitiously wiped her face on her sleeve. She tried not to breathe in the foul-smelling liquid. She wondered again what was going to happen to her now. The woman who gave birth to the man who gave birth to her, who was supposed to be her grandmother, had betrayed her. So what now? Hadn't they mentioned murder? Were they still going to murder her? Was this just a rite before the ritual? All this thoughts kept echoing through the valleys of her cranium, colliding with one another and the walls and  back, turning her into a more panicked mess with headache.

That there was no one to answer her haunting questions, no one to save her, no one to comfort her, made her more and more afraid and she thought she'd die from fear. She seriously wished that death from fear would happen, it would beat the not knowing and the having to face the guillotine or whatever they planned to orchestrate her death with. She could feel her heart banging wildly against it's cagey walls and the resonation in her throat. Fear wouldn't let go of the pit of her belly, it held on tight to it with it's canine jaws, it's waves traveling the way up and down her spine and her whole being. She felt the urge to throw up but her throat was heavy and dry.

It was at moments like this that she wished tears would come.

The man's voice was now climbing higher and seemed to have reached a crescendo for he stopped abruptly and froze in front of the child in the circle.

A surprised Eniiyi had started to slowly raise her head when the first lash landed on her back, curving into her stomach. She gave a surprised yelp and tried to leap up in the pain but her bound limbs saw to it that she didn't.

'O evil one, I command you to evacuate from this human vessel!'

The whip cracked again and Eniiyi fell down to her side in pain, screaming. She tried to wiggle away from the man but some white force was pushing her back to him.

'Stop, please!' she screamed in agony. Her whole  body stung and was on fire from the pain. The pain was nothing she'd ever experienced.

Deaf to the pleas of the cowering, small child the whip came down again. And again, and again.

'She's not even crying!' Now that the rites had been completed the people were now free to talk.

'This one is the devil herself!'

The voices continued to spew their own vitriol at the plight of a child the age of many of their own children.

The grandmother wouldn't stop weeping as she watched from afar. She knew that it was the required procedure and that there was nothing she could have done to heal the girl, even if she tried, but watching the girl in so much agony unsettled her lake of tears and turned it to flowing streams down her cheeks. Oh, if only the girl hadn't been brought to the village!

'Grandma, help me!' she screamed.

The old woman's heart couldn't rend more.

Then village doctor stopped screaming at the demon believed to be possessing the child. He touched a polkadotted, short stick to her head and jumped back, chanting incantations.