Chapter 50: THE FIRST ATTEMPT
The ritual began at eight o'clock.
We couldn't wait any longer. Father Gorman wouldn't arrive until morning, but Carolyn was deteriorating by the hour, and Father Callahan had convinced himself that a preliminary cleansing might weaken Bathsheba enough to buy us time.
He was wrong.
The living room had been transformed into sacred space. Salt lines at every entrance. Candles burning at the cardinal points. Holy water ready in silver bowls. The family huddled in the corner—Roger holding Carolyn, the girls pressed together like frightened animals.
Callahan stood in the center of the room, his stole draped over his shoulders, his prayers book open in his hands. Ed flanked him on the right, rosary wrapped around his fist. I took the left, Ed's father's crucifix burning against my palm.
Lorraine sat with the family, her role to anchor their spirits, to keep them grounded while the storm raged around them.
"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti," Callahan began. His voice was steady, trained by years of practice, honed by faith that had never faltered until he arrived in this house.
The first prayers washed over the room like water—cleansing, purifying, pushing against the darkness that had saturated every surface. I felt the shift immediately, the slight lifting of pressure that always accompanied genuine sacred work.
For thirty minutes, it seemed to be working.
The cold retreated. The shadows thinned. Even Carolyn's color improved, some of the deathly pallor fading from her cheeks. The children stopped crying. Roger's grip on his wife relaxed.
Then the walls started bleeding.
It began as a seeping—dark fluid emerging from hairline cracks in the plaster, trickling downward in thin streams. Within seconds, every wall in the room was weeping that same terrible substance. Not blood, not quite, but something older. Something wrong.
"Don't stop!" Callahan's voice rose above the horror. "The prayers are working—she's reacting—"
"That's not a reaction," I said. "That's a counterattack."
The temperature plummeted. The candles guttered and died, snuffed by a wind that came from nowhere. The holy water in our bowls began to boil, then evaporated entirely, leaving nothing but residue on the silver.
And then she appeared.
Bathsheba Sherman materialized in the center of the room—fully visible, fully terrible. A corpse in a white dress, hanging as if still suspended from her suicide tree, her neck bent at an impossible angle. Her face was twisted with centuries of accumulated hatred, her eyes burning with dark fire, her mouth opening to speak words that hurt to hear.
"YOU CANNOT CLEANSE WHAT IS ALREADY DAMNED."
The voice shook the house. Pictures fell from walls. The children screamed. Carolyn convulsed in Roger's arms, her body arching as Bathsheba's presence resonated with the piece of herself already embedded in the mother's soul.
[ENTITY MANIFESTATION: TIER 4 — FULL]
[THREAT ASSESSMENT: EXTREME]
[RECOMMENDATION: TACTICAL RETREAT]
Bathsheba's attention swept the room—dismissing Callahan, noting Ed with contempt, lingering on Lorraine with something like recognition. Then her eyes found me.
"FALSE PROPHET." The words dripped with venom. "WRONG SOUL. I WILL WEAR YOUR SKIN NEXT."
I raised the crucifix. Faith poured through me—every prayer I'd memorized, every moment of genuine belief, every ounce of power the system had granted me over three years.
Light blazed from the sacred metal. Golden radiance pushed against the darkness, carved a sphere of safety around my body.
Bathsheba screamed. The sound was inhuman—rage and pain and centuries of frustrated malice compressed into a single note. She recoiled from the light, her form flickering, her power momentarily disrupted.
But she didn't vanish.
"FAITH FROM A PRETENDER." Her voice was weaker now, but still terrible. "DELICIOUS."
She gestured.
I flew backward.
The impact with the wall drove the air from my lungs and stars across my vision. I felt something crack—ribs, maybe, or the plaster behind me—and tasted blood where I'd bitten my tongue. The crucifix stayed in my hand, still glowing, but my concentration had shattered.
Bathsheba laughed.
Then she was gone—not destroyed, not expelled, but retreating. Choosing to withdraw rather than continue the confrontation. Conserving her strength for whatever came next.
The blood on the walls stopped flowing. The temperature slowly normalized. The silence that followed was worse than the chaos that preceded it.
I lay against the cracked wall, trying to remember how to breathe.
The cut on my forehead was bleeding freely—I'd hit something sharp on the way down—and my back screamed with bruised muscles and possibly worse. Every breath was an effort.
But I was alive. We were all alive.
The children were crying. April had buried her face against Sadie's fur, her body shaking with sobs. Christine was praying—the Saint Michael prayer, the words I'd taught them—her voice thin and desperate. Even Andrea had given up her teenage composure, her face wet with tears she couldn't control.
Roger was holding Carolyn, who had stopped convulsing but now laughed in a voice that wasn't her own. The laughter cut off abruptly, replaced by confused silence as she returned to herself.
"What happened?" Carolyn's voice was weak. "I heard her. She was so loud. And then—"
"The cleansing failed," Ed said. His face was gray with exhaustion and fear. "She's stronger than we anticipated."
Father Callahan stood frozen in the center of the room, his prayer book still open in his hands, his expression one of absolute horror.
"I've never—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I've never seen anything like that. The manifestation, the power, the—" He looked at me, still lying against the damaged wall. "She threw you. With a gesture. That shouldn't be possible."
"Lots of things shouldn't be possible." I pushed myself upright, fighting through the pain. "But here we are."
Lorraine helped me to my feet, her hands gentle on my arm. Her eyes held the same fear as everyone else's, but beneath it was something harder. Determination. Resolve.
"Father Gorman arrives in the morning," she said. "Full authorization. The complete rite. Whatever we just witnessed—the Church has dealt with worse."
"Has it?" Callahan's voice cracked. "Has it really?"
"Yes." Ed's tone brooked no argument. "We've worked with the Vatican before. They have resources, rituals, power that goes back centuries. What we attempted tonight was a preliminary cleansing—the spiritual equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight. Tomorrow, we bring the guns."
The metaphor was crude, but it worked. Some of the panic left Callahan's face.
"Until then?"
"We hold the line." I touched the cut on my forehead, winced at the pain. "We pray. We protect the family. And we survive until dawn."
Midnight found us huddled in the reinforced safe zone.
Every light in the house was on—not that lights could stop Bathsheba, but the illumination helped keep the family calm. The prayer rotation had resumed, Ed's voice giving way to Lorraine's giving way to mine in an endless cycle of sacred words.
I watched the shadows while I prayed. Watched for any sign of movement, any indication that Bathsheba was preparing another assault. The house groaned around us, settling in ways that might have been natural or might have been something far worse.
At 3:07 AM, I felt her.
Not an attack—not yet—but presence. Awareness. The weight of ancient attention pressing against my consciousness, testing the Mental Walls I'd built, probing for weakness.
I see you, traveler.
The words weren't spoken aloud. They appeared in my mind, bypassing my defenses, delivered with the intimacy of a whisper in the dark.
Tomorrow changes nothing. The Church has tried before. The Church has failed before. What makes this time different?
I didn't answer. Didn't acknowledge. Just kept praying, kept watching, kept waiting for dawn.
You're different. The voice was curious now, almost admiring. Wrong soul in borrowed flesh. I've never encountered anything like you. When this is over—when the family is mine and the Warrens are broken—I'm going to take my time with you. Learn what you really are. Perhaps the one who sent you will answer my questions.
The presence withdrew. The pressure eased.
I kept praying until the first gray light touched the eastern windows.
Father Gorman's car pulled up the Perron driveway at 6:47 AM.
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