"Hello, Mrs. Emory. Is Trey home?" I asked.
My boyfriend's mother looked suspiciously at Henry and Mischa, who stood behind me on the Emory's front stoop. The snowfall had increased over the course of the last hour, enough that flakes began to clump in my hair as I waited for Mrs. Emory to reply. She pulled the front door closed behind her as if she didn't want any of us to get a good look inside the house, although I could hear the television in the living room broadcasting a Christmas movie. "Trey's not feeling well. I don't think he's up for seeing any visitors."
"We brought him something," I said, holding the plastic bag from Hennessey's in front of me as if it contained a thermos of soup instead of a spray bottle of holy water.
Mrs. Emory reached for the bag. "That was very thoughtful of you. I'll make sure he gets it."
I clung tightly to the bag, refusing to let go. "I was kind of hoping to give it to him myself."
Softening, Mrs. Emory opened the door for me to enter. "Just you."
With a quick glance over my shoulder, I tried to convey to Mischa and Henry with my eyes that they should creep around the side of the house toward Trey's bedroom window so that I could let them in if I found myself in danger. But neither of them were familiar with the layout of the Emory's house, or with my own house, which was an architectural copy—as was just about every house on Martha Road. Mr. Emory barely acknowledged me as I stepped into the living room. He sat on the plaid couch with a mug in one hand and a glaze over his eyes as he watched television. The stray cat that Trey had rescued at the start of the school year watched me from its hiding spot behind the rocking chair with an odd alertness. "You know the way." Mrs. Emory nodded me in the direction of Trey's bedroom.
The sound of my own heartbeat in my ears was like someone beating a bass drum at an erratic rhythm. Shadows engulfed the Emory's hallway leading to Trey's room, and my paranoia about what awaited me on the other side of his closed door increased when I noticed that Mrs. Emory was looming behind me in the doorway to the living room, timidly watching. I wondered what other strange things Trey had done since arriving home to make her act so skittish. It was almost as if she were expecting his bedroom door to blow off the hinges when I got too close.
I slowed my pace, wondering if Trey was awake and listening to my approaching footsteps. My fingers trembled as I reached into the plastic bag. Now that I was one twist of a doorknob away from facing him, I figured it might be best to have the holy water in hand, ready for action, in case I needed to use it like a weapon. Then again, I wasn't entirely sure it would work like a weapon. I swallowed hard. I wrapped my right index finger around the trigger of the spray bottle and opened the door with my left hand.
Nothing leapt out at me, which momentarily made me feel like an idiot for having braced myself for impact. I stood in the doorway squeezing the doorknob for a long moment as I took in the details of Trey's room. The room was a mess, but that was its usual state. Trey lay in his bed under blankets with his back to me. A strange smell, stale and putrid, hung over the room like a cumulus cloud. An odd sheen reflected off the walls from the cool, snow-hued light spilling in through the window. Upon closer glance I realized that Latin phrases had been scrawled everywhere in pencil, from the floor all the way up as high as presumably Trey's arms could stretch—even higher around his bed, since he must have stood on the mattress to reach the ceiling. Light from the window bounced off of the silvery pencil lead.
As far as I knew, Trey didn't know any Latin.
"You shouldn't be here," Trey said in a low voice without turning to face me. His words chilled me to the bone. The voice was not his, I realized now.
I closed the door behind me gently so that Mrs. Emory wouldn't observe anything else that might occur during my visit. Truthfully, I wasn't sure if I had the nerve to go through with my task. I pressed my back against the door and rested my left hand on the doorknob, ready to run for my life if necessary. It was seeming like a good idea to slink past Trey's bed and raise the window so that Henry and Mischa might be able to help me, but I couldn't find the courage to take the first step in that direction. "I'd like to talk to Trey," I requested, hating how much my voice shook.
I took a small step toward the window.
"Look at you. You're petrified. If you're so scared, you should leave. Trey doesn't want to talk to you," the voice replied. With bitter sarcasm, it added, "He wants you to go. He's worried about your safety."
I took a few more steps toward the window. "I'm worried about his safety," I replied. I lifted my hands to unlock the window, but when I slid the locks in opposite outward directions, I made the mistake of looking over at the bed. Trey was eerily grinning at me, or rather it—whatever was inside of Trey's body—was grinning at me. He was still lying down, but his head had rotated to a gruesome angle so that it looked as if it were fastened to his body backward. The blankets had fallen to reveal his bare torso so that there was no mistaking the distortion of his body for an optical illusion.
Forgetting about the window, I clapped my hands over my mouth to trap a scream in my windpipe. From where I stood, it seemed as if Trey's neck must have snapped for him to have turned his head at such an angle. Surely no one's spine could twist like that and remain intact. In that moment I was certain that Trey was possessed, and it seemed doubtful that I'd ever get my boyfriend back from this nightmarish creature that had invaded his body.
"You really should go," Trey told me in a taunting, patronizing tone. I heard the slide locks on the window behind me click back into their locked position. "It's what's best for everyone."
Muffled through the glass of the window pane, I heard Henry calling from outside. "Open the window. Why doesn't she open it?"
With numb fingers, I slid the locks open again and used all of my might to heave the window upward. Not caring about what would happen to it, I pushed the screen out of its frame. It drifted to the ground where it settled on the snow. "Is he in there?" Mischa asked. She didn't wait for my reply before she hoisted herself up and climbed in through the window carrying the roll of duct tape she'd bought at Hennessey's.
"Whew. It stinks in..." Mischa trailed off as she took notice of Trey's ghoulish appearance. Henry, too, was at a loss for words once he joined us. In addition to Trey's staggering disfigurement, he was unearthly pale. His face was swollen and his eyes were sunken.
"There's nothing you can do to save Trey," the voice coming from Trey's mouth told us. I fought the urge to cry and vomit at the same time. It was sickening to see the boy I loved leering at me like a monster. "He's surrendered to me. He's tired of this worthless life, and he hates all of you." His voice dropped to a hiss. "He wants you to leave him alone. Especially you," he pointed at me. "You can't save anyone. Your sister is burning in the fires of hell because you couldn't save her!"
My stomach lurched at the vicious words escaping through my boyfriend's chapped, scaly lips. Father Fahey had warned me and Mischa that the demon would resort to cruelty, but I hadn't expected that it would know anything about how my sister had died in a house fire.
Beside me, Henry's muscles tensed. "That's enough," he warned the demon inside Trey. Henry looked at me and then at Mischa. "We've gotta do this thing. On the count of three. Ready? One, two..."
The three of us lunged at Trey in unison. Henry pinned Trey to the mattress, anchoring his legs and shoulders to the bed. With quivering arms, Mischa tore off a strip of duct tape and tried to decide where to place it on Trey's squirming body. While Trey's freakishly backward head thrashed and he snapped his teeth as if trying to bite Henry's hands, Henry shouted, "Cover his mouth!" Trey snarled like a wild animal in a trap, enjoying how disturbed we were by the the guttural noise coming from his body.
Too frightened to be of real assistance, I did nothing but spray the bottle of holy water maniacally in the general direction of the bed. As Mischa slapped tape over Trey's mouth to prevent him from biting anyone and spewing more nonsense, and Henry flipped his body over and bound his wrists and ankles together, I inadvertently soaked all three of them with liquid. Confirming my worst fears, Trey winced as if he were being scalded each time a mist of holy water landed on his skin.
Although we were making quite a racket, Mrs. Emory didn't once knock on the door to intervene.
"Now what?" Mischa asked breathlessly after she and Henry had done their best to subdue Trey's writhing, grunting body.
Henry's eyes drifted from Trey's bedroom door to the open window. Our choice was pretty clear: attempt to carry Trey's wriggling body past his parents and out of the house through the front door, or maneuver him through the open window. Mischa turned to me and said, "I guess we should call Father Fahey and tell him to meet us at Violet's house in twenty minutes."