25

Demons Under Scrutiny

The next several weeks were a living hell, not only for the Snedekers but for the researchers as well.

It was almost as if the forces that were moving invisibly through the house were not pleased by the fact that they were under close surveillance by three strangers. It was almost as if they were angry: More than ever before, those forces began to show their power with a vengeance.

One night, Al went to bed before Carmen. He lay down on one of the many mattresses spread over the living room floor.

Peter and Stephanie were already sound asleep in their respective corners, curled up beneath sheets and blankets, their heads resting on their pillows. John had been up for nearly twenty hours and was now snoring lightly on the floor in front of the sofa.

Carmen and Laura were talking softly with Chris and Sal in the dining room when Al finally settled beneath the blankets. He'd had a bit too much to drink and felt sluggish and weary. It wasn't long before his eyelids were lowering heavily, and his breathing was be-coming very slow.

Then he suddenly jerked awake and stared, wide-eyed, at the ceiling for a long moment. Then it began again, the process of going to sleep....

He jerked awake again. This time, he rolled on his side and tried to get as comfortable as possible.

He began to drift away again...not quite asleep and not quite awake...and that was when it came to him....

Spots of bluish-white light danced and spun behind his closed eyelids. They began to gather together as they drew closer and closer...larger and larger...and they began to form a picture...

Not quite asleep, Al turned on his back again and opened his eyes, thinking that perhaps he was experiencing some negative side effect of having had too much beer. That, however, was not the case.

When he opened his eyes, he expected to see the ceiling, but instead, the spinning and dancing lights that seemed to draw nearer and nearer did not go away. Even with his eyes open, he saw them against a deep-black backdrop—not against the ceiling that he knew was above him.

As he watched in awe, the lights drew closer and closer together, slowly forming a figure...a very familiar figure...one that swept rapidly toward his face...the figure of Christ on the cross...but this Christ was unlike any in the pictures...this one had a face that was horribly mutilated...twisted into a deformed, hideous mask of pain...eyes bulging from their sockets...swollen tongue protruding from the fat, cracked lips, which moved and began to speak:

"I can't help you, Allen...I can do nothing...I am dead...do you understand?”

The figure of Christ drew closer and closer.

"I...am...DEAD! I am no MORE!"

It drew closer and closer until Al could smell its putrid breath, until he thought he could feel that fat, protruding tongue on his face...

"I can't HEEAAR YOOUU, Al! I can't HEEAAR YOOUU, Al! IIII'M...NOT...HEEEERE!"

Then the stinking, bleeding figure of the monstrous Christ fell on him, and—

Al sat up screaming again and again.

John sat up and scrambled toward Al.

"What's wrong?" he asked breathlessly. "What's wrong, Al, what's the matter?"

AJ's arms reached upward toward the ceiling. "Jesus! It was Jesus! He came to me! He said He couldn't help! He said He was dead! He said He wasn't here!" Al gasped for breath and his whole body shook with panic.

John put a hand firmly on Al's shoulder. "It's okay, Al, it was just something the demon wanted you to see, that's all, just something to discourage you."

As John spoke, the others rushed in from the dining room and gathered around, concerned after hearing Al's screams.

"It's okay," John said. "This will happen. This is the kind of thing it's going to do. It wants to scare you. All of you. It wants you to let go of your faith. It wants to discourage you. But, believe me, you can't let it."

Al had calmed down quite a bit by then. He turned to John and said, "I'm okay, now. Really. I'm fine."

As John went to his notebook to make a record of the incident, Carmen sat down beside Al.

"You sure you're okay?" she whispered, putting an arm around him and holding him close.

"Yeah, I'm fine now. I just...I just hope that doesn't happen again. That was"—he shook his head and took a deep breath—"really horrible. Believe me."

"You want me to stay with you until you're asleep?"

"Would you mind?"

"Of course not, sweetheart, of course not."

So that was what Carmen did. She stroked his hair and spoke to him in a gentle voice until he was asleep, until it seemed that nothing more was going to be shown to him by whatever force was working in their house.

A couple of weeks later, Al and Carmen were seated on the porch steps together, enjoying the warm summer night. It was late and Laura and the kids were asleep.

Inside, all three of the researchers were awake, talking quietly and watching over the others who were sleeping.

Al and Carmen spoke quietly, enjoying a rare moment of privacy.

"Things've been rough," Al said, putting his arm around her and holding her close.

"No shit," Carmen laughed, laying her head on his shoulder.

"We'll get past it," he said. Then he added quietly, "I hope."

"Oh, we will. I know. It's just everything that we apparently have to go through before we get past it that bothers me."

"Yeah, I know what you mean."

Over the preceding weeks, they had let their friends and relatives know—as gently as possible, but firmly enough to get the point across without giving them any ugly details—that it wouldn't be a good idea to drop in for a visit, at least not for a while. As a result, they got a number of telephone calls from their concerned friends and family asking what was wrong, if anyone was sick, if they were having some sort of marital problems.

Al and Carmen decided to tell a select few about what was going on. They told Al's family, Carmen's sister Lacey, and their neighbor Tanya, who was the least surprised of all and not a bit skeptical. Carmen explained to her that she'd called the Warrens and that their researchers were staying in the house now.

They were enjoying a moment of privacy on the front porch, Al drinking a beer, Carmen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette. They said little, just sat close, vaguely hearing the voices of the researchers in the house, enjoying, for a while, the feeling of being alone and close to one another.

Suddenly, Carmen's cup of tea slipped from her hand. It shattered two steps down from them and hot tea splashed over their feet.

Al flinched at the sound, startled, but Carmen did not move, did not react at all.

"Carmen?" Al said quietly.

Next, the cigarette fell from her fingers and rolled down the steps, its red ember glowing a brighter red as it rolled farther from the glow of the porchlight and into the dark of the night.

Carmen fell back on the steps with a grunt, as though she had been pushed by invisible hands. Her legs jerked. Her mouth opened and her tongue protruded stiffly as her elbows locked and her fingers curled into stiff claws.

"Oh, dear Jesus, Carm!" Al cried, leaning toward her as he dropped the bottle of beer. It, too, shattered and foamy beer hissed down the steps.

With her eyes open impossibly wide, Carmen's throat began to blacken steadily, to swell slowly into a tremendous, bulging, balloon of flesh, like the throat of a croaking frog.

Al screamed, "Oh my God, get out here get out here now!"

The front door opened and Chris, John, and Sal burst out of the house as Carmen's rigid, trembling limbs relaxed, and she released a long, gurgling sigh.

For a little while—just a very short while—Carmen could hear the voices around her. But they faded fast, moving away from her, far, far away from her, until she could no longer hear them.... She was someplace else, some dark, cold place, so dark that she could see nothing, so unreal and dreamlike that she could feel nothing.

Everywhere she looked, Carmen saw only blackness, a blackness so thick and oppressive that it was almost tangible. There was nothing...nothing around her...nothing to see...nothing to touch...nothing.

And then she looked up.

Far, far above her was a circle of faint, sickening, reddish light, and she realized she was at the bottom of a very deep hole. As she stared at that circle of light high above her, two faces appeared.

One was male, the other female, both very pale, with black, stringy hair. Their mouths split into broad grins simultaneously, revealing narrow teeth gray with decay and separated by silver-thin gaps.

"You miserable cunt!" the man shouted, and his phlegmy voice echoed in the darkness.

"You stupid bitch!" the woman spat.

Carmen huddled in the darkness, cowering from their insults as they continued to spew profanity at her, to call her names and laugh at her fear.

"You think there's something you can do about us?" the man asked.

"You think you have a god more powerful than we are?" the woman laughed. "Your god's a weakling!"

"A pussy!"

"Your god's a cocksucking faggot and he's not going to help you now!"

"You belong to us! Your soul is ours!"

Their voices reverberated throughout the darkness that surrounded Carmen and their spittle rained down on her. Their words dug into her like filthy, jagged fangs.

Al and the three researchers hunched over Carmen, listening as she rasped and gurgled through her swollen, bruised-looking throat, "Ho- Ho-leeee M-Mary, M-Mother of G-God, pr-pray for us sinners, n-now and at the hour of our d-death, a-a- mmmmen...."

As Al began to cry, they lifted Carm from the porch steps and carried her into the house.

The faces leering over the edge of the hole's opening continued to spit obscene insults and blasphemous curses down at Carmen, continued to mock her God and her family, continued to remind her that they and their millions were far too powerful for her, or anyone in her family, to resist or overcome.

And then suddenly, horribly, those faces began to draw closer and become larger and larger, their smiles growing wider, bigger, and their grotesque, rotting teeth becoming more and more detailed as Carmen was somehow lifted up from the bottom of that deep and narrow pit, lifted closer and closer to the opening above, to those faces, those hideous, gaunt, pale faces with their sickening grins and their deep-set, corpselike eyes that watched as she rose higher and higher until her feet were planted firmly on the ground with the hole (she thought) directly behind her. But when she turned slowly and looked down at the ground, there was nothing there, just hard, dry dirt veined with dark, wide, jagged cracks that webbed out in all directions, like lightning bolts that had been sewn together.

Her tormentors were nowhere to be seen. Apparently, they had simply disappeared.

When she looked ahead of her, Carmen realized she was on a road...a long road made up of dry cracked earth. There was so little light, though, as if it were night...and yet, not exactly as if it were night.

Carmen leaned her head back and looked up to see a sky filled with malignant black clouds that were racing by at a dizzying speed.

But there was a light coming from someplace...a sick, cancerous light that illuminated whatever it was that lay on either side of the road.

Carmen did not look, though. She was afraid to look. She began to walk, slowly at first, limping a little from her fear and the trembling exhaustion that coursed through her. Then she picked up her pace, her feet crunching over the broken road as she began to shed tears silently, tears that rolled hotly down her cheeks as she wondered where she was and what had become of her husband, her family, her house...as she wondered what had become of her.

Ahead, the road narrowed to a needle point in the distance. It seemed to go on forever, as far as she could see and farther, the jagged cracks fading to visual memory far, far ahead in the corrupt darkness.

Her chest began to tighten with panic as she realized that she was very, very far from home...just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz...just like Alice in Through the Looking Glass...she was in a frightening, foreign place, and it was very real...and she had no idea how to get back.

She continued walking, her shoulders aching with tension and her chest beating with fear.

Al and the three researchers lay Carmen down on one of the mattresses in the living room.

"Jesus Christ, what's happening to her?" Al rasped, his eyes welling with tears.

"She's under attack," John said.

"But shouldn't we call a doctor or an ambulance?" Al asked. "I mean, my God, she looks like something's wrong with her, like she's dying!"

"There is something wrong with her," Chris said, leaning over her. "She's under attack by whatever demonic force is at work in this house. We've seen this happen before."

"Yeah, Al, we have," John said reassuringly. "A doctor would find nothing. In fact, it might be over by the time we got her to one. Look, where's one of the rosaries?"

"Well, I think there's one, um—" Al looked around until he spotted one on top of the television. He stumbled over the mattresses to the television and grabbed the rosary, then hurried back, holding it out to John.

"No, no," John said. "It's for you. Hold on to the rosary and do the Hail Mary and the Our Father."

"And keep doing them," Chris said firmly, "until we're done." Then he looked at John and Sal and said, "We're gonna have to do the invocation and just keep doing it for as long as it takes."

They both nodded.

"Oh, dear Jesus, it's bad, isn't it?" Al whispered.

"Nothing God can't handle," Chris said reassuringly. And then, as Al started reciting the Hail Mary, the three researchers began to say together, "In the name of Jesus Christ! We command that you leave this place! To go back to the place from which you've come! In the name of Jesus Christ!"

Al knelt at Carmen's head as her throat continued to grow darker and thicker, as the three men repeated the invocation. He placed one hand on her shoulder and gripped the rosary in the other as he said the Hail Mary and the Our Father at nearly a shout, and Chris, John, and Sal continued to invoke the name of Christ.

Carmen gasped for breath as she made her way down the endless road. Finally, she began to look to her right and left at the landscape that surrounded her.

The first thing she noticed were the crosses...enormous crosses made of rugged wood, planted firmly in the ground...upside down...in both directions as far as she could see.

All around those crosses, writhing upward out of the ground, were black, shapeless blobs that seemed to be trying, unsuccessfully, to ooze up from the hard, cracked earth and pull themselves free.

Jagged needles of light shot silently through the black clouds that rushed by overhead, and suddenly, coming from nowhere in particular but from everywhere around her, a deep and gravelly voice—the sound, Carmen thought, of disease—spoke to her:

"They are souls, Carmen...lost souls that belong to us now...to me...just as you belong to me...just as you and everyone in your family belong to me..."

Carmen stopped on the road and screamed at the top of her lungs, praying to God that someone would hear her, that someone would find her and help her.

When Al heard Carmen making a small, strangled sound deep in her throat, he stopped in the middle of the Our Father and leaned toward her, placing a hand on the side of her head and whispering to her, "Carmen, honey, what is it? What's the matter?"

Chris, John, and Sal had been invoking Christ again and again and, suddenly, Chris spoke up and said, "She's not here, Al, she's not with us, just keep praying and keep—"

Upon hearing that, Al said with great determination into Carmen's ear, "Where are you, Carmen, honey, where are you?"

When she began to respond as best she could, the three researchers stopped their invocation and listened.

"Dark," she gurgled, spittle gathering at the corners of her mouth. "Dark place...in a...place...in a dark place," she said, forcing the words up from her chest and through her throat.

"Oh God where is she?" Al cried, looking up at the three men.

"It has her," John said, "and we have to get her back."

Immediately, they raised their voices as they continued their invocation, and, after a long moment, Al finished the Our Father and went into the Hail Mary.

Carmen continued to scream and dropped to her knees as she looked around at all the souls...all the black, trapped souls...feeling oppressed and smothered by their need to break free, by their desire to get away from whatever it was that had brought each of them to this place...

The voice that seemed to come from everywhere, the phlegmy, disgusting voice that seemed to come from the bottom of the very deepest pit in hell began to laugh. Its laughter was deep and throaty and filled with malignant, decadent glee.

Carmen slapped her hands over her face and screamed once again, unable to tolerate the laughter on top of the claustrophobic feeling brought on by the black, tumorous souls squirming up from the barren ground.

After a small eternity, the laughter began to fade and, along with it, the feeling of oppression.

Slowly...ever so slowly...Carmen began to take her hands away from her face.

Her eyes opened to look blearily up at Al, whose concerned face hovered over her, his lips forming a straight, tense line.

"Carm?" he whispered hoarsely. "Oh, dear Jesus, Carm?

"Al," she breathed, reaching up to take his hand. She gripped it hard, as if he were being pulled away from her.

She saw Chris and John and Sal kneeling beside her suddenly, all of them smiling as John said, "Thank God," and Sal said, "Amen," and Chris just grinned so broadly that he looked as if he might burst into laughter at any moment.

"You're back," Chris said finally.

"Yeah, I guess so," Carmen whispered.

Nearly two hours later, Carmen was sleeping restlessly beside Al on the mattress. Chris, John, and Sal were talking softly over coffee in the dining room.

Al was propped up on his side in pajama bottoms and a robe, watching Carmen as she slept. His forehead was creased with worry, fear, and confusion.

Carmen tossed back and forth as she slept, her sleeping eyes pressed together beneath a dark frown.

He prayed silently, never taking his eyes from her, relieved that Laura and the kids weren't around to see what had happened.

And then, Carmen's body stiffened and her back arched as if she were in silent agony. Once again, her throat began to swell and darken, turning a purplish black.

Al sat up, clutching her shoulder, calling, "It's happening again, get out here, it's happening again, oh Jesus, Jesus Christ!"

Footsteps rushed across the hall and into the living room and the researchers hurried over the mattresses to Al and Carmen.

John had a crucifix in his hand and held it out before him as he said loudly, with authority, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave this place—"

Chris and Sal quickly joined in, saying the words with him.

Carmen's head tilted back. Her eyes opened to reveal only glistening whites as she gurgled and choked and her arms and legs began to shake and convulse violently.

Al shot to his feet suddenly, fists at his sides, teeth clenched, and growled furiously, "Goddammit, I'm stronger than she is! Come to me, you son of a bitch, do it to meeee—"

All three men fell silent at once and turned to Al. Chris shouted, "Al, don't say that!" and Sal grabbed Al's arm and barked, "Stop!" as John dropped to his knees at Carmen's feet and continued the invocation alone, nearly shouting now, still holding the cross out toward Carmen as if it were a weapon.

But Al ignored them.

"Come to me, dammit!" he continued. "I'll fight you, you goddamned son of a bitch, you fucking—"

Al's words caught in his throat as sharply and suddenly as fish-bones, lodging there as he began to make a strangled gurgling sound. His eyes grew wider and wider, the color drained from his face, leaving him a sick, pale color.

Then he was thrown down to the mattress as if by powerful but invisible arms and he landed with a strangled grunt.

"Oh dear God," Sal groaned.

Al landed on his hands and knees, head falling forward weakly.

Carmen's erratic movements began to calm down. The swelling and blackening of her throat began to go away as Al's condition seemed to worsen.

John continued to invoke the name of Christ at a fever pitch, his forehead sparkling with beads of perspiration.

As Chris and Sal watched, the hem of Al's bathrobe was thrown hard up over his head and the elastic waistband of his pajama bottoms was torn as they were pulled down violently, revealing his bare behind.

Al screamed, his voice so high and shrill it sounded like a woman's, and his whole body began to jerk as if something were ramming into it again and again and again. His screams continued, screams filled with pain, with horror.

Carmen began to stir. She opened her eyes and blinked several times as she sat up.

"What's wrong?" she asked, turning to Al. "Oh, my God, what's happening to him?"

John stopped the invocation and took a long breath. Then, his voice hoarse, he said, "He's being attacked...like you were...just a few seconds ago."

For a long moment, they all watched Al, stunned and helpless, knowing exactly what was happening to him.

"Oh God," Carmen gasped, beginning to cry. She moved toward Al and put an arm around his shoulders as he continued to scream shrilly again and again, a sound that was so foreign to Carmen coming from her muscular, rock-ribbed husband. She looked over her shoulder and shouted at the others, "Do something! That's what you're here for, dammit! Do something!"

But their prayers had no effect. When it was over, Carmen huddled beside him and held him close, "Oh, my God, honey, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry you had to go through that." Having experienced the same thing herself, Carmen knew exactly how humiliating it was, how helpless she'd felt while she was being violated; it made her heart ache to know that Al had been through the same humiliating experience.

Another night had passed in a house that had, somehow, developed a pipeline to hell.

Al and Carmen and Laura were not the only ones to be attacked by the entity that had targeted their house, though for some reason, it showed little interest in the smaller children; during their stay, all three researchers were assaulted in one way or another. They were tormented in their sleep as well as pinched and stung and slapped again and again throughout the day and night. Objects continued to move around the house, apparently by themselves, almost as if they had lives of their own.

Early one evening, after Al had gotten home from work, everyone had dinner outside, picnic-style. When they came in, Sal was the first to notice that something odd was happening in the living room. He called for the other researchers and, naturally, everyone else in the house followed them in.

Each of the mattresses on the floor was breathing. The middle of each one bulged slowly, as if inhaling, then relaxed, leveling out.

Ed and Lorraine dropped in frequently and stayed for a few hours, witnessing for themselves many of the incidents that the researchers had seen firsthand.

They saw some of the attacks; they witnessed the objects that moved around the house; they smelled the odors and saw the flashes of movement just out of their line of sight, movement seemingly caused by nothing.

During one of their visits, they heard a loud, metallic rattling sound that seemed to be coming from the master bedroom. Al was at work, the kids were outside, and Sal and John were resting in the living room, so Ed and Lorraine, Carmen, Laura, and Chris went down the hall hesitantly and into the bedroom. Carmen and Laura each held a rosary while Ed and Chris were carrying crucifixes.

In the bedroom, the sound was much louder and beneath their feet, the wooden floor was vibrating slightly. They all stopped just inside the room.

Finally, Lorraine stepped forward and put her hand lightly on the footboard of the bed.

"It's much worse here," she said quietly.

"Where's it coming from?" Ed asked, moving through the room slowly.

Lorraine lifted her right hand before her as she had during her first visit to the house and closed her eyes.

"Not in here," she whispered. "Somewhere else."

"Oh God," Carmen said, "it sounds like the pulley... the body lift downstairs. It's right below this room. In fact...it's right below the bed."

Suddenly, the sound made sense; the metallic rattling was the kind that might be made by a chain hoist, like the one in the cold, damp basement below.

They filed through the door at the back end of the bedroom that led down into the basement. When they were halfway down the stairs, the rattling stopped abruptly.

In the basement, they found the heavy chain swinging slightly, the links jingling very softly.

It was not the last time that happened, nor the last of the many strange occurrences Ed and Lorraine would witness.

During another visit, Lorraine was enveloped by another frightening vision, not unlike the one she'd had the first time she'd walked through the house.

She was standing at the top of the stairs near the bathroom, looking down into the bedroom below, about to descend into the basement— the part of the house that the Snedekers now refused to enter—when it began. It was so vivid and unexpected that, for a moment, she wasn't even aware that it was a vision—until she realized that she couldn't move, that she was paralyzed.

A man appeared at the bottom of the stairs. He did not step around the corner, he simply appeared, as if from the very air around him. He wore a filthy undershirt and a pair of baggy, too-long pants that had once been tan but were now so stained and soiled that they looked more brown than anything. The ragged hems bunched around his feet, which wore nothing but dirty white socks. His round, sagging belly pressed against the undershirt and hung over the waist of the pants, with faint shadow filling the massive indentation made by his navel. His hair was black and stringy and fell to his shoulders; on top, he was going bald and his pale scalp was visible through wisps of hair. Beneath his left arm was tucked a pair of brown workboots. With the stubby fingers of his fat hands, he was pulling up and fastening his filthy pants. His breath came in winded, wheezing gasps, as if he'd been exerting himself a great deal.

The man looked up and his watery, bloodshot eyes locked with Lorraine's, which were wide and frightened. He grinned, showing jagged, discolored teeth. His lips were fat and dry and cracked and his glistening tongue slid out to moisten them as he began to make his slow way up the stairs.

"Nice bodies," he said, his voice low and phlegmy, wet and guttural. "Nice cold bodies. Cold, firm bodies."

He took step after step, closer and closer...

"Don't move when you touch 'em. Don't fight when you hold 'em or lick 'em." He laughed.

...closer and closer, step after step...

"Fact, you can do anything you fuckin' want to 'em," he chuckled as he reached the top of the stairs. He reached for Lorraine's hand, saying, "C'mon, I'll show. You want, you can watch me. See? I'm ready again." He laughed as he let the boots drop from beneath his arm and reached down for his crotch.

Lorraine lowered her eyes and watched as he grabbed the horrible bulge that had grown between his legs. The zipper of his pants was still open and she caught a glimpse of what looked like lumpy, purplish flesh, discolored with what appeared to be dirt, or maybe blood.

Closing her eyes and pushing herself backward away from him, Lorraine cried out as her back slammed against the bathroom door. When she opened her eyes again, she was sitting on the floor and the man was gone. Ed was kneeling at her side, anxiously whispering, "Lorraine, what is it, what's wrong?" "Necroph...necro...horrible things, Ed...horrible things happened in this house."

"Necrophilia?"

She nodded. "I saw something...a man...he told me what he did...he wanted me to watch..."

Once Lorraine had calmed down and was able to stand and talk coherently, they explained to the others what she had seen and what it meant.

"That sort of thing," Ed said, "necrophilia, I mean—sex with dead bodies, the kind of thing that, according to what Lorraine saw, happened here at one time—is evil. It draws demonic activity. The location of such things can become a target for demonic attention."

"It's not necessarily a definitive explanation," Lorraine said hoarsely, a glass of icewater in her hand, "but it certainly goes along with the vision I was shown when I first came here. I really believe that is what happened here...and I believe it's what brought about the trouble you're having now."

"So what do we do?" Carmen asked quietly. "How can we stop it?"

Ed and Lorraine looked at one another, silent for a moment. They had no doubt that what was happening in the house was very, very real. They knew what the next step was, but they didn't know what the result of taking it would be and were reluctant to raise the Snedekers' hopes.

"Next," Ed said, "we contact the church."

"We've already done that," Al said, a little angrily. "It didn't get us anywhere!"

"I know," Ed replied. "Now we're going to contact them. We'll tell them what we've found, what we've seen and what we believe to be the problem. The only thing is...and I'm not saying this is going to happen, but..."

"What!" Al snapped impatiently.

"We might get the same response you did."