Evil Walks
Chapter Five: Welcome Home
"Welcome to where time stands still
No one leaves and no one will
Moon is full, never seems to change
Just labeled mentally deranged
Dream the same thing every night"
-- "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" by Metallica
She never truly understood why she had woken up that late night in August of 1996. Maybe she had heard something, or more likely, some thing had called her. Whatever the reason, it didn't matter. The fact remains that five-year-old Deanna woke up late that night feeling terrified.
First she ran to Jared's room. The two-year-old was sitting in his crib crying a high-pitched siren of one long scream, for he was struck by the same fear that gripped Deanna's heart. They hurried to their parents' room, but Mommy and Daddy weren't there.
That was when the shouts from downstairs arose -- down from the scary, dark basement they weren't allowed to go in.
The basement door was just barely open, and a thin sliver of light shone into the hallway. They shrank away from it at first, with the memory of Daddy angrily yelling at them to stay away from the basement discouraging them, but the hallway was brimming, no, swarming with shadows. Shadows with claws. Shadows with teeth. Shadows with glowing eyes. Shadows of things that could get them. Jared clung tightly to D's arm as they stared wide-eyed at the surrounding darkness. They both swore for the rest of their lives that some shapeless black thing lunged toward them, and that spurred the children on to open the door and scramble down the basement stairs with a shriek.
There the kids founds Mommy and Daddy with two of Daddy's friends. On the floor lay something that reminded Deanna of when she squashed a worm on the sidewalk with her shoe, except this was much, much bigger than a worm, and it was covered in red and pink and black goo. Then there was an eyeball dangling from its socket, and it was looking right at her, and Deanna felt that stare penetrate through her skin. She felt it on her insides, and it was like a million bugs crawling on her and in her and all over her. Jared held D's hand tightly as he trembled, and she knew he felt it too.
It was the first dead body they ever laid eyes on. It certainly wouldn't be the last. Or the messiest.
Daddy and the others weren't even looking at the body. They were too busy watching Mommy, and something was very wrong with Mommy. Her eyes were all black, like the pupils had dilated until there were no whites or irises left, and she was bent over at a weird angle. The cracking of her spine filled Deanna's ears as Mommy bent backwards almost in half, far more than anything human should or could.
Deanna had been afraid of Daddy's temper from time to time, but never before had she been of afraid of Mommy. Until now. Now she would be afraid of Mommy until the day she died.
"Irene, no!" cried Daddy with a sob of despair. There was a glow, a blue-violet-white kind of aura emanating from him, which made the Mommy-thing hiss like a snake when it touched its skin.
Behind Deanna, Jared was sobbing.
One of Daddy's friends, Father Matt, a tall, skinny priest with dark blood staining his cassock and crimson stole, was holding aloft an iron crucifix and reading aloud from a book. "Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus
immunde, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis," he struggled to read, his voice hoarse with terror as he stumbled over the words, et in noimine
Jesu Christi Filii ejus, Domini et Judicis nostri, et in virtute
Spiritus Sancti..." He was so involved in his chanting that he couldn't dodge when the Mommy-thing sprang at him and twisted his head clean around.
The second dead body Deanna and Jared ever saw dropped to the ground, and their shrill voices let loose screams.
That drew the attention of the Mommy-thing and the others to them. The Mommy-thing's black eyes snapped towards them, and its bloody mouth opened to give an amused chuckle.
"No, get back!" yelled Daddy, and he tried moving toward the kids, but some invisible force knocked him back. The shiny aura around him flickered and dimmed for a moment.
The Mommy-thing bounded toward them spider-like on all four limbs and grabbed their little throats. It squeezed hard enough that Jared's scream was choked off, and Deanna struggled for breath. The Mommy-thing had talons, and their skin burned where the talons cut them. Its breath was hot against their faces, and darkness swirled before their eyes.
"Get the fuck away from them!"
Whipping its head in Daddy's direction, the Mommy-thing grinned toothily. There was blood and bile smeared on those teeth. "Are you still so adamantly against negotiation?" it asked pleasantly in a dry, masculine voice that sounded too human to match the horror of the creature who spoke.
"Fuck you!" Daddy snarled, though his dark green eyes were filled with anguish. "I'm not fucking surrendering to Hell, you son of a bitch!"
Deanna's vision blurred and filled with black spots -- like tiny little versions of the Mommy-thing's eyes everywhere.
"Not even for their souls?" it taunted. It released its grip on the kids a breath away from strangling them, and with a taloned hand it yanked on one of Deanna's brown pigtails. White as a sheet, white as a ghost, Deanna could not find the courage to say anything or even to move away, like Jared was doing, crawling back toward the stairs while tears and snot ran down his face.
Daddy's other friend, Uncle Eric, dove toward Fr. Matt's corpse and was leafing through his book, trying to find the exorcism incantation. "Don't you do it!" Eric shouted, although Deanna never figured out if he meant that for Johnny or for the demon.
Daddy's fists were clenched so tightly that blood dripped from where his fingernails dug into his skin. "Fuck. You. Bitch," he repeated forcefully as the glow of blue-white light coming from him began to pulse.
"F-f-fuck y--" Deanna sputtered, trying to echo Daddy, but one look from those black eyes shut her up. (It was the first time she'd ever used one of Daddy's bad words, the first of many, many times. This night was night full of firsts.)
The Mommy-thing's sharp talons cupped Deanna's face while its bloody lips twisted into a smug smile. "Okey dokey, then," it chortled. "Their souls are mine. Both of them."
All color drained from Daddy's face. Beside him Uncle Eric was stumbling through the Latin incantation from the book and badly mispronouncing the words, but Deanna could barely hear him. The sound of the demon's voice filled her head until there was nothing else as it said, "I'll give you some more time with them. Let you get attached before I harvest. It will be nicer, by which I mean more painful for you and more fun for me."
"Bastard!" Daddy spat, though he made no move forward.
"Before the girl comes of age, Satan himself will take them," the thing that had possessed Mommy said. "We're going to have so much fun with them."
"Daddy!" Deanna screamed, but it became a cry of pain as the demon threw her to the floor unceremoniously. She crawled over to her sobbing brother.
The Mommy-thing swerved toward Daddy. "See you soon. In Hell," it laughed, and it continued laughing as its talons began slicing away at Mommy's face. The shimmering purple-white light that somehow came from Daddy surged toward the demon while Uncle Eric's chanting rose in volume, and suddenly there was an explosion of light and flesh.
When the glow faded, the entire basement was covered in pieces of Mommy.
The thing's laughter was still echoing in Deanna and Johnny's heads as they kept on screaming.
August 16, 1996. For the Wesson family, that was the night the world broke into a million pieces, just like Irene Wesson had.
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