The first demon we ran into after reuniting Winchester and Sons had a thing for crashing airplanes, which is something they like to do. Haunt ships and planes, even cars. Probably they used to haunt chariots and triremes, too. Anyway, before we figured out what it was, we got a little refresher course in EVP, or electronic voice phenomena. That’s when things get recorded on tape that nobody in the room actually said. And it sure was happening here, because on the cockpit voice recorder of this most recent crashed plane, Britannia flight 2485, a voice was clearly saying, “No survivors…no survivors…”
Except there were survivors of this particular crash, which occurred after one of the passengers ripped open the emergency door in midflight, which is impossible for a normal human being to do. Seven survivors, one of whom, from his new residence in a mental hospital, said that the guy who opened the door had black eyes.
A picture was starting to emerge here, and it was confirmed after we talked our way into the NTSB warehouse storing the wreckage and found sulfur all over the door handle.
Demon.
And, like most problems with demons, this one got worse and more complicated before it got better. We figured out that this demon had haunted flights before and brought them all down forty minutes after takeoff. Now it was after the survivors of flight 2485.
Which meant we had to figure out which one of them it was going to go after, and that turned out to be a stewardess. To make a long story short, we performed a full-on exorcism in midair while the demon was trying to crash the plane with us in it.
The Rituale Romanum, man. Don’t leave home without it. Guaranteed to first make a demon manifest, and then blow it back to hell. Here it is, the whole shebang, in the original Latin. Usually you only need the first round of the three, but you should memorize the whole thing, because there is literally nothing worse than not being able to exorcise a demon when you really, really need to.
OREMUS ORATIO
Deus, et Pater Domini nostri Jesu Christi, invoco nomen sanctum tuum, et clementiam tuam supplex exposco: ut adversus hunc, et omnem immundum spiritum, qui vexat hoc plasma tuum. Mihi auxilium praestare igneris. Per eumdem Dominum. Amen.
EXORCISMUS
Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursio adversarii, omne phantasma, omnis legio, in nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi eradicare, et effugare ab hoc plasmate Dei. Ipse tibi imperat, qui te de supernis caelorum in inferiora terrae demergi praecepit. Ipse tibi imperat, qui mari, ventis, et tempestatibus imperavit. Audi ergo, et time, satana, inimice fidei, hostis generis humani, mortis adductor, vitae raptor, justitiae declinator, malorum radix, fomes vitiorum, seductor hominum, proditor gentium, incitator invidiae, origo avaritiae, causa discordiae, excitator dolorum: quid stas, et resistis, cum scias. Christum Dominum vias tuas perdere? Illum metue, qui in Isaac immolatus est, in Joseph venumdatus, in agno occisus, in homine crucifixus, deinde inferni triumphator fuit. Sequentes cruces fiant in fronte obsessi. Recede ergo in nomine Patris et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti: da locum Spiritui Sancto, per hoc signum sanctae Crucis Jesu Christi Domini nostri: Qui cum Patre et eodem Spiritu Sancto vivit et regnat Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.
OREMUS ORATIO
Deus, conditor et defensor generis humani, qui hominem ad imaginem tuam formasti: respice super hunc famulum tuum (N), qui dolis immundi spiritus appetitur, quem vetus adversarius, antiquus hostis terrae, formidinis horrore circumvolat, et sensum mentis humanae stupore defigit, terrore conturbat, et metu trepidi timoris exagitat. Repelle, Domine, virtutem diaboli, fallacesque ejus insidias amove: procul impius tentator aufugiat: sit nominis tui signo (in fronte) famulus tuus munitus et in animo tutus et corpore (Tres cruces sequentes fiant in pectore daemoniaci). Tu pectoris hujus interna custodias. Tu viscera regas. Tu cor confirmes. In anima adversatricis potestatis tentamenta evanescant. Da, Domine, ad hanc invocationem sanctissimi nominis tui gratiam, ut, qui hucusque terrebat, territus aufugiat, et victus abscedat, tibique possit hic famulus tuus et corde firmatus et mente sincerus, debitum praebere famulatum. Per Dominum. Amen.
EXORCISMUS
Adjuro te, serpens antique, per judicem vivorum et mortuorum, per factorem tuum, per factorem mundi, per eum, qui habet potestatem mittendi te in gehennam, ut ab hoc famulo Dei (N), qui ad Ecclesiae sinum recurrit, cum metu, et exercitu furoris tui festinus discedas. Adjuro te iterum (in fronte) non mea infirmitate, sed virtute Spiritus Sancti, ut exeas ab hoc famulo Dei (N), quem omnipotens Deus ad imaginem suam fecit. Cede igitur, cede non mihi, sed ministro Christi. Illius enim te urget potestas, qui te Cruci suae subjugavit. Illius brachium contremisce, qui devictis gemitibus inferni, animas ad lucem perduxit. Sit tibi terror corpus hominis (in pectore), sit tibi formido imago Dei (in fronte). Non resistas, nec moreris discedere ab homine isto, quoniam complacuit Christo in homine habitare. Et ne contemnendum putes, dum me peccatorem nimis esse cognoscis. Imperat tibi Deus. Imperat tibi majestas Christi imperat tibi Deus Pater, imperat tibi Deus Filius, imperat tibi Deus Spiritus Sanctus. Imperat tibi sacramentum crucis. Imperat tibi fides sanctorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, et ceterorum Sanctorum. Imperat tibi Martyrum sanguis. Imperat tibi continentia Confessorum. Imperat tibi pia Sanctorum et Sanctarum omnium intercessio. Imperat tibi christianae fidei mysteriorum virtus. Exi ergo, transgressor. Exi, seductor, plene omni dolo et fallacia, virtutis inimice, innocentium persecutor. Da locum, dirissime, da locum, impiissime, da locum Christo, in quo nihil invenisti de operibus tuis: qui te spoliavit, qui regnum tuum destruxit, qui te victum ligavit, et vasa tua diripuit: qui te projecit in tenebras exteriores, ubi tibi cum ministris tuis erit praeparatus interitus. Sed quid truculente reniteris? Quid temerarie detrectas? Reus es omnipotenti Deo, cujus statuta transgressus es. Reus es Filio ejus Jesu Christo Domino nostro, quem tentare ausus es, et crucifigere praesumpsisti. Reus es humano generi, cui tuis persuasionibus mortis venenum propinasti.
Adjuro ergo te, draco nequissime, in nomine Agni immaculati, qui ambulavit super aspidem et basiliscum, qui conculcavit leonem et draconem, ut discedas ab hoc homine (fiat signum crucis in fronte), discedas ab Ecclesia Dei (fiat signum crucis super circumstantes): contremisce, et effuge, invocato nomine Domini illius, quem inferi tremunt: cui Virtutes caelorum, et Potestates, et Dominationes subjectae sunt: quem Cherubim et Seraphim indefessis vocibus laudant, dicentes: Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Imperat tibi Verbum caro factum. Imperat tibi natus ex Virgine. Imperat tibi Jesus Nazarenus, qui te, cum discipulos ejus contemneres, elisum atque prostratum exire praecepit ab homine: quo praesente, cum te ab homine separasset, nec porcorum gregem ingredi praesumebas. Recede ergo nunc adjuratus in nomine ejus ab homine, quem ipse plasmavit. Durum est tibi velle resistere. Durum est tibi contra stimulum calcitrare. Quia quanto tardius exis, tanto magis tibi supplicium crescit, quia non homines contemnis, sed illum, qui dominatur vivorum et mortuorum, qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos, et saeculum per ignem. Amen.
OREMUS ORATIO
Deus caeli, Deus terrae, Deus Angelorum, Deus Archangelorum, Deus Prophetarum, Deus Apostolorum, Deus Martyrum, Deus Virginum, Deus, qui potestatem habes donare vitam post mortem, requiem post laborem: quia non est alius Deus praeter te, nec esse poterit verus, nisi tu, Creator caeli et terrae, qui verus Rex es, et cujus regni non erit finis; humiliter majestati gloriae tuae supplico, ut hunc famulum tuum de immundis spiritibus liberare digneris. Per Christum Dominum Nostrum. Amen.
EXORCISMUS
Adjuro ergo te, omnis immundissime spiritus, omne phantasma, omnis incursio satanae, in nomine Jesu Christi Nazareni, qui post lavacrum Joannis in desrtum ductus est, et te in tuis sedibus vicit: ut, quem ille de limo terrae ad honorem gloriae suae formavit, tu desinas impugnare: et in homine miserabili non humanam fragilitatem, sed imaginem omnipotentis Dei contremiscas. Cede ergo Deo qui te, et malitiam tuam in Pharaone, et in exercitu ejus per Moysen servum suum in abyssum demersit. Cede Deo qui te per fidelissimum servum suum David de rege Saule spiritualibus canticis pulsum fugavit. Cede Deo qui te in Juda Iscariote proditore damnavit. Ille enim te divinis verberibus tangit, in cujus conspectu cum tuis legionibus tremens et clamans dixisti: Quid nobis et tibi, Jesu, Fili Dei altissimi? Venisti huc ante tempus torquere nos? Ille te perpetuis flammis urget, qui in fine temporum dicturus est impiis: Discedite a me, maledicti, in ignem aeternum, qui paratus est diabolo et angelis ejus. Tibi enim, impie, et angelis tuis vermes erunt, qui numquam morientur. Tibi, et angelis tuis inexstinguibile praeparatur incendium: quia tu es princeps maledicti homicidii, tu auctor incestus, tu sacrilegorum caput, tu actionum pessimarum magister, tu haereticorum doctor, tu totius obscoenitatis inventor. Exi ergo, impie, exi, scelerate, exi cum omni fallacia tua: quia hominem templum suum esse voluit Deus. Sed quid diutius moraris hic? Da honorem Deo Patri omnipotenti, cui omne genu flectitur. Da locum Domino Jesu Christo, qui pro homine sanguinem suum sacratissimum fudit. Da locum Spiritui Sancto, qui per beatum Apostolum suum Petrum te manifeste stravit in Simone mago; qui fallaciam tuam in Anania et Saphira condemnavit; qui te in Herode rege honorem Deo non dante percussit; qui te in mago Elyma per Apostolum suum Paulum caecitatis caligine perdidit, et per eumden de Pythonissa verbo imperans exire praecepit. Discede ergo nunc, discede, seductor. Tibi eremus sedes est. Tibi habitatio serpens est: humiliare, et prosternere. Jam non est differendi tempus. Ecce enim dominator Dominus proximat cito, et ignis ardebit ante ipsum, et praecedet, et inflammabit in circuitu inimicos ejus. Si enim hominem fefelleris, Deum non poteris irridere. Ille te ejicit, cujus oculis nihil occultum est. Ille te expellit, cujus virtuti universa subjecta sunt. Ille te excludit, qui tibi, et angelis tuis praeparavit aeternam gehennam; de cujus ore exibit gladius acutus: qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos, et saeculum per ignem. Amen.
The next time we had to use the Rituale was on a pretty little thing named Meg, who apart from being blond and cute was possessed by a seriously sadistic demon of above-average toughness. She was enough of a badass to conjure and control daevas, which puts her definitely in the major leagues. What’s a daeva, you ask? Well. There are demons, and then there are demons. Daevas are real assassins. No black-eyed, fooling-around possession for them. You only see their shadows, and by the time you see that, you’re already dead. They’re Zoroastrian and mean enough and scary enough that we get our word “devil” from them.
And like we said, Meg had them on a leash.
What you need in order to do this is a serious black altar, of the kind that we’ve only seen twice, the kind that would make Anton LaVey wake up screaming in the night. This kind of black altar is soaked in human blood, made partly of bones, with dried human hearts in an offertory bowl and its altar-cloth tassels made from human hair. With that kind of altar, you can do some powerful necromancy, and Meg sure had the knowhow.
So she had the daevas, and she wasn’t afraid to use them.
We found out about Meg—who Sam had run into a couple of months before, pretending she was just on a bus trip across the country—because of an unsolved murder in Chicago in which the victim, Meredith McDonnell, was torn apart and her heart removed. Our kind of thing. Werewolf, we were thinking. Then we talked our way into the scene, where we found that the victim’s blood had been carefully dripped around the floor to form symbols:
Later that night, we asked around Meredith’s workplace, the Firetop Bar, and right as we’re reading a newspaper article about another savage murder much like that of Meredith McDonnell, who should walk in but Meg.
What a coincidence. You run into a girl in a bus stop in Indiana; she’s on her way to California. Months later she’s in Chicago, in the same bar you just walked into. Small world.
Maybe even a little too coincidental, we were sort of half-heartedly thinking, but she was hot, and Sam was lonely, and Dean was looking out for his little brother—and the end result was that when Sam stealthily followed his crush out that night, she just so happened to wander into a warehouse in which there was this real gruesome black altar with two human hearts on it. You know, right after two locals had been killed and their hearts removed. And on the altar was the same sign that was on Meredith McDonnell’s floor.
A daeva sigil.
We put our heads together, and at about the same time we find out that both of the murder victims were natives of…Lawrence, Kansas.
That was a little too much coincidence for either of us. It was time to have a little chat with Meg.
Which didn’t go the way we’d planned, actually, because she’d been playing us the whole time. She knew we were coming, and she sicced the daevas on us, and before we knew what hit us, we were tied up in chairs, bait for Dad. Who was Meg’s real target.
Now, we might be easily turned into idiots when there are pretty girls around, but we’re at our best when tied to chairs with bloodthirsty demons about to dismember us. Dean accidentally made a noise while trying to get free, so Meg came over to get things under control—only to find that Sam had slipped loose. Over went the black altar, and the daevas went over Meg, and Meg went out the window from seven stories up.
Later that night, we had a family reunion. First time all three of us had been together since Sam decided to go to college. And then the daevas crashed the party, and it was time to get the hell out of Chicago.
We thought we were done with her, but it turned out we didn’t know Meg very well. The next time we ran into her was after she called to tell us that she’d killed two of Dad’s oldest friends, Pastor Jim Murphy and Caleb, whose last name we don’t think even Dad ever knew. Hunter culture is like that. Meg threatened to keep on offing his friends unless he brought her the Colt, and he agreed—though of course, being Dad, he brought a fake and left the real one with us, because the Demon was supposed to appear in Salvation, Iowa, that night. That’s Dad, taking a fake gun to a nest of demons to make sure we got our shot at the Big Kahuna.
It almost worked—but close doesn’t count in demon hunting. When we saw Meg face-to-face, out at Bobby Singer’s, she had Dad held hostage in a warehouse in Jefferson City, Missouri. We didn’t know this, though; we needed to get it out of her. Figuring that she’d never tell us, we decided to exorcise her and hope that her human host would know. We had no idea whether the plan would work, since at that point neither of us had ever been possessed, and from what we knew of the lore, there was no way to predict whether the host would remember anything that happened during the possession.
Plus there was the complication that the last time we’d seen Meg, we’d thrown her out a window, and another demon we’ll call Tom—who turned out to be her brother—had shot her to see if the Colt was real, so her human body was definitely on demonic life support.
To trap a demon as strong as Meg, you need more than your typical pentagram. You need something like the protective circle from the Clavicula Solomonis, or Key of Solomon. It looks a little something like this:
Once you’ve got that, and your Rituale Romanum handy, you’re ready to do some business with your demon. Which we did, exorcising Meg and sending her back to hell. What was left behind was this dying girl, agonized and grateful to us because we’d let her die after everything she’d felt her possessed body doing. Nobody should ever have to feel that. And we were partly responsible for it. We let her die.
And then we headed off to Jefferson City to get Dad back.
Meg had told us the Demon was there and that he would want the Colt. She was right on both counts, as we found out after we stormed in there, wasted a couple of demons, and got the hell out with Dad. Two hours later, out in the middle of nowhere, we found out that the Demon had played his best joke yet. He was in Dad, and he was going to kill us, slowly, and make us watch each other’s deaths. But the Demon hadn’t counted on Dad, who was, hands down, the toughest SOB we ever knew. Dad got hold of his own body long enough for Sam to grab the Colt, and Sam plugged him in the leg. Knocked him down, hard, with Samuel Colt’s magic burning through him and Dad now strong enough—just barely—to hold the Demon inside him so we could kill it.
We had it. We had it there, trapped in our father, and we could have ended the whole thing right then. Could have made the whole crusade of our lives worthwhile.
Except, you know, we couldn’t. Because he was in our father.
So that’s the story about how we let the Demon, who’s planning a war against all that is good in humanity, get away. Because some things are more important. Family is more important.
And that wasn’t the last we heard of Meg, either—or Gordon Walker. Seems Gordon tickled some information out of a demon and found out about the six-month children, and the demon let him know that Sam was one of them. So, Gordon being Gordon, he decided that a preemptive strike was the best course. Meaning he decided he’d kill all of the six-month children before they got a chance to be drafted into the Demon’s army. He killed Scott Carey and then took a shot at Sam before we turned the tables on him and arranged for a local police department to find him armed to the teeth in the immediate vicinity of some recently deceased people.
From one perspective, that’s a dirty trick. From another, it’s a means of survival. And the truth is, we felt bad about it, except when we remembered that Gordon had tried to kill Sam. We thought that when we turned Gordon Walker over to the police, in a really compromising situation, that we had done about the worst thing one hunter could do to another. That is, until Sam got possessed by a demon and killed Steve Wandel.
We’d never met Steve, but we knew he was a hunter. He hung around Harvelle’s, and we’d probably seen him in passing. Probably he had known Dad, before Dad traded his own life—and the Colt—to save Dean in the aftermath of the car accident. But once Steve was dead, we had a problem. Word was already out on the hunter grapevine that something wasn’t quite right with the Winchesters, and if it ever got out that Sam had killed Steve Wandel—even if it was really a demon that had done it—we’d have been exiled. If we managed to stay alive.
The first thing we had to do, though, was an exorcism on Sam. After a little run-in involving Jo Harvelle and Dean, Sam headed for his next target, and that’s where he made his first mistake. The demon possessing him got a little overeager and went after Bobby Singer. Bobby, who knows his ass from a hole in the ground, knew right away that something was wrong with Sam. He spiked Sam’s beer with holy water and, while Sam was recovering, tied him up under a Devil’s Trap. What can we say; Bobby’s got style.
Anyway, this is when things got even more complicated.
When Bobby tried to exorcise the demon possessing Sam, we found out that the demons had started to work on ways to counter the binding rituals. In this case, the demon was Meg, who had a personal grudge against us for the way we treated her the year before, and she had managed to figure out how to break the Devil’s Trap.
Spiritus immundi, ungularum suarum emittite paulatim iram. Domina, persona carnis ossisque, toti mundi, trepidationais pennarum, tu appellatus vir, veritas et mensura. In murum somni pii, spiritus immundi, ungularum suarum emittite paulatim iram.
Near as we can figure, this is a Black Mass–style inversion of a spiritus mundi. The bad guys are always trying to keep up with us. So far we’ve generally managed to stay just a little ahead. This time, though, there was a binding involved. Sometimes, if it’s worried about running afoul of an exorcist, a demon will bind itself inside a body. Usually the way to do this is through a brand or a scar, which has to be destroyed before the demon can be exorcised. This time, the demon got the jump on us by binding itself into Sam by burning a symbol onto his arm. And since the demon was Meg, who as we’ve mentioned before is pretty tough, and who was not in the least bit happy about having been sent back to hell, things were looking bleak for the Winchester boys…
Until Bobby laid a hot fireplace poker on the binding symbol and burned it into oblivion.
Then, because the exorcism had already happened, Meg had to go. We only wish we’d finished the whole thing, so we could have watched her melt back into the hell she’d come from. The hell she’d brought with her, both for Sam and for Steve Wandel.