Parting ways with Elisa, Mondena dragged her exhausted legs up the stairs one step at a time.

  The moment she pushed the door open, she let it fall shut behind her with a dull thud, shoulder braced against the wood in a reflex that was equal parts loathing and habit—half a resigned gesture of “I’m home,” half a desperate attempt to shut out the nightmare that still clung to her from that cold alleyway.

  Maybe it was because she hadn’t turned on the lights yet, but the corridor, already choked with clutter, felt unnaturally cold. In the corner, a half-dead potted plant slumped sideways, its once-green leaves wrinkled and curled to a dirty yellow, breathing out a stale, defeated smell. The sliding door of the plastic shoe cabinet hung half open, several pairs of damp old shoes piled inside, exuding a sour, unpleasant reek.

  She tossed her schoolbag and coat onto the little wooden stool by the entryway. Maybe she’d used more force than she meant to, because the bruised joints and tendons along her knuckles and wrist began to throb in protest. Her legs were still trembling faintly. Just as she was about to step into the living room, her foot clipped the cluster of empty bottles lined up against the doorframe. Glass clattered.

  “Damn it,” she yelped before she could stop herself.

  She darted a glance toward the living room. Hearing no roar from her father, she hurriedly stooped, gathered the bottles, and set them back a little farther away.

  She walked into the living room almost purely on muscle memory; her thoughts lagged far behind her steps. She had only just bent her knees toward the edge of the brown-yellow sofa—its upholstery long since dulled and darkened—when she simply collapsed, boneless, onto the cushions like a heap of discarded cloth.

  No one said a word in the living room, but small noises kept pricking at the silence: the old refrigerator humming dully in the kitchen, the radiator pipes occasionally ticking with faint metallic knocks. The air was far from fresh. Old newspapers and all manner of church-related paperbacks were crammed into the peeling wooden bookcase. The stale stench of cigarettes and the sour edge of alcohol tangled with the cheap perfume of laundry detergent and cleaning fluid, all of it soaked into the slightly damp carpet until the entire, cluttered room felt close and suffocating.

  On the coffee table, a ring of dried coffee stained the surface. Beside the remote control, which had been tossed carelessly onto the sofa, several yellowing church bulletins and roughly printed hymn sheets lay half-crumpled under it.

  Just as Mondena braced her hands to try and push herself upright, her Puritan father, Mr. Redeemed, staggered in from the far side of the flat, swaying slightly, a glass of red wine in hand. His eyes were bloodshot; a few dark red droplets had soaked into the moustache at the corner of his mouth. His steps were slow, but his face still wore that perennially uncompromising, severe expression.

  Mondena knew all too well: at this hour, every day without fail, her father would appear as if attending some solemn rite, bottle in hand, claiming the center of the sofa. He would light a cigarette, fill the room with smoke, and sit there, drinking and puffing, like a priest enthroned in his own private liturgy.

  Mr. Redeemed jabbed the remote with his elbow. The old LCD screen flickered on—first a brief flash of snow, then the evening news channel he always watched. Seeing that the nightly broadcast had already begun, he took a deep swallow of wine, then turned the volume up with one hand while his other reached, by long habit, for the Bible whose cover had long since fallen to pieces.

  Mondena glanced sidelong at him and shook her head, helpless, just as she did every other night. What he was turning over was technically a Bible, but to her eyes it looked more like a battered dictionary he’d nearly worn to shreds. The black faux-leather cover had split open at all four corners; along the spine, patches of color had been leeched away by years of spilled wine and sweat. The pages, darkened by time and secondhand smoke, were thick with lines and notes scrawled in red ballpoint pen—angry underlinings, exclamation marks, little slogans of commentary squeezed into the margins.

  Mr. Redeemed flipped through the pages with his thick knuckles, jabbing at the paper as he listened to the news and muttered curses at the state of the world. No—“curses” almost wasn’t the word. His tone was closer to those extremists marching down city streets, the ones who spit rhetoric into megaphones: every few sentences a sneer, a spray of contempt, a fresh load of scorn heaved at the latest lurid scandal and grotesque reversal splashed across the media.

  “Here we go again,” he said, not even bothering to glance at his daughter, whose face had gone a little pale beside him. “A ‘socialite,’ they call her. A whole herd of brainless idiots dancing after those over-painted whores of Babylon they see online. Utterly vile.”

  On the TV, the anchor continued in an impassive tone, reading out the latest headlines:

  “—And now, we return to the ongoing investigation into the ‘Spring of Love International Gospel Fund.’ Newly disclosed internal ledgers show that this organization—which operates under the banners of ‘Building the Lord’s House’ and ‘Loving Offerings’—has taken in over five point three million pounds in donations from believers across the country over the past seven years. The majority of these funds, however, appear to have been diverted by senior management into purchases of luxury real estate, high-end vehicles, and personal travel expenses…”

  The image cut to several photos supplied by investigators: a black luxury Porsche parked in the front drive of a detached villa; a close-up of several middle-aged men in suits and glasses, massive crosses gleaming on their chests as they stepped out of the car, smiling amid a crowd of hangers-on; and then a series of shots from a vault inspection—safe boxes overflowing with banknotes, gold, and jewelry laid out for counting.

  Next came footage of several grey-haired elderly women being interviewed outside a church. They clutched crumpled receipts and donation records in their hands. One, eyes reddened, recited verses under her breath. Another kept crossing herself, shivering as she murmured over and over again, “I just wanted to do a little more for the Lord… may the Heavenly Father have mercy…”

  The feed cut back to the studio. The anchor went on:

  “—It is alleged that the organization repeatedly stressed to its congregants the message that ‘without offerings there can be no blessing,’ and encouraged some retired believers to mortgage their homes and donate the proceeds in one lump sum to the church and its affiliated bodies, claiming this would ‘store up treasures in heaven’ and ‘purchase opportunities for absolution’…”

  “Treasure, my ass!” Mr. Redeemed roared, slamming the empty glass down before refilling it and downing another mouthful. “Bastards hiding behind the fucking church’s banner to line their pockets. Wolves in sheep’s clothing, every last one of them—sweet-talking about the Lord’s mercy while their hearts are a cesspit.”

  He flicked another handful of pages aside; his thick finger stabbed down on a passage he had already marked in red. Bringing the wine-tainted air with him, he raised his voice and began to read:

  “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”

  “See that? It’s all right here!” He jabbed the page for emphasis. “Scum like them ought to be spikes them on the city walls for everyone to see.” Before the words had fully left his mouth, he tacked on a string of vile curses, twisting his earlier indignation into something harsher, more venomous.

  On the screen, the discussion among panel experts and members of the investigative committee was growing heated. The ticker at the bottom scrolled ceaselessly: [Fund-Raising in the Name of the Church?] [Believers’ Life Savings Misappropriated] [Regulatory Failure] and so on. A bespectacled pundit, in a cool and measured tone, was analyzing the long-term harms posed by “blind obedience to religious authority among congregants” and “a systemic lack of transparency in charitable donations.”

  “These lot are no better,” Mr. Redeemed snorted, glancing at the panel before letting out a string of cold laughs. “Mouths full of ‘oversight’ and ‘reform,’ but in their hearts they’d love nothing more than to use this as an excuse to beat every church to death with one stick. One crooked pastor gets caught, and suddenly the whole world expects those who are truly preaching the Gospel to be dragged down with him?”

  He snorted again, louder this time, words coming faster as the alcohol and smoke coiled in his lungs.

  “They ever stop to think whose fault it is these frauds find a gap to slither through? It’s people’s selfishness. Their hypocrisy. Their cowardice and their greed. It’s this new generation, led by the nose by the Internet and public opinion, that keeps spreading the devil’s whispers and no longer believes in the Lord.”

  He finished snarling the last sentence, then dropped his eyes back to the page and barked out another line of Scripture:

  “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

  “Understand?” he snapped. “You can’t claw after vanity, wallow in filth, and still expect to bask in God’s favor.”

  Even that didn’t seem enough for him. He suddenly spat out another crude string of obscenities, mashing “Mammon” together with a handful of filthy terms until the holy name and the gutter language were indistinguishable. Cigarette smoke and the sour reek of wine thickened around him, pressing down on the cramped living room and driving the air, inch by inch, toward something foul and almost unbreathable.

  The reek of stale smoke and alcohol hit Mondena and she shot her father a small, instinctive look of disgust. By now, the motion was practically a conditioned reflex—because from the moment she stepped out of the hallway and into the living room, she had already foreseen the chaos of the evening: the sofa, the television, the wineglass, the Bible, and that almost deranged Puritan father. Everything had fallen into place in the exact, hateful sequence she knew too well, waiting only for her to walk in and complete the one-man show he insisted on performing every night.

  Her glance lasted no more than a heartbeat before she yanked it back, as if she’d brushed against something searing hot. She sat there, spine straight, for a few seconds, then simply let herself fall backwards until she was sprawled out on the couch.

  She stared up at the ceiling.

  It was no longer white. Years of grime and second-hand smoke had stained it an uneven yellow-grey, and under the light it all blended into a nauseating, uncanny hue. A hairline crack ran from the side of the old ceiling fixture all the way to the corner where the wall met the roof—like one of those fractures that tear open across the sky at the end of the world.

  Mondena followed the crack’s path with her eyes, trying to fix her gaze on some single point, anything to anchor herself against the surge of images churning up from the depths of her mind. Her thoughts and sense of reality were still sludge; everything that had happened at dusk clung to her like a ghost—the damp chill of the alley air, the sour stench of alcohol and sweat, that filthy, greedy hand reaching for her, the sharp pain as her knee smashed into the ground, and the way the air itself had seemed to tighten and collapse when Eliza raised her fingers, as if some invisible fist had clenched the world.

  Every image came with sound and sensation attached, replaying on a loop in her skull. All it took was a blink, and that sickening, nauseous feeling would rise again, souring her stomach.

  She tried to breathe deeply, tried to roll her shoulders loose. She forgot, for a moment, where she was.

  This was home.

  With every inhale, all that rushed into her nose was the familiar, suffocating odor of this house: the tar long since vaporised and embedded in every surface, the everlasting dampness and sweat ground into the old sofa, the dust and shed hairs sunk deep into the carpet, the faint must of aged paper leaking from the standing cabinet full of old books. Together they formed a closed, stagnant atmosphere that belonged to this living room alone. For anyone else, this might have been just an ordinary family space. For Mondena, these smells were the entire background color of her childhood fears.

  Suddenly, Mr. Redeemed turned his head and peered toward where she lay. He lit a cigarette in a lazy, practised motion, and said thickly, slurring with drink:

  “Hey. You remember Mrs. Victoria—you know, the one who treated you pretty well when you were little? Her daughter’s been possessed by a demon for months now, and the whole thing’s been a nightmare…”

  He broke off to hiccup, a wet sound that sent a fresh wave of alcohol fumes rolling straight over Mondena. She was on the edge of breaking down, but for fear of his temper when drunk, she forced herself to sit up, teeth clenched.

  “We’ve all been run ragged by it lately. There’s only one way left. This Saturday, two priests from different parishes are going to do a private exorcism on that kid using the Catholic rite. You’re coming with me. You’re the same age as she is—kids your age can talk to each other. With you there to chatter at her a bit, things should go smoother. Once we get there, you just sit tight, follow our lead, read from the Bible when we tell you to, and improvise if you have to.”

  Smoke drifted slowly across Mr. Redeemed’s face as he spoke, his tone carrying the flat finality of a decision long since made. It sounded less like a request and more like informing his daughter of some minor household chore. As for what Mondena wanted, or thought?

  That had nothing to do with him.

  At that, Mondena’s eyes flew wide. She felt her heart plummet, dropping hard in her chest, and the cold she’d just barely managed to push down surged up again from the base of her spine.

  She hadn’t yet recovered from the terror of that evening—not even the strange burning ache in her eyes, that sting born of extreme fear, had entirely faded. And now her own father, without so much as a pause, was casually reaching for her like a convenient tool, ready to shove her, within a matter of days, into another event that might be even more horrifying and supernatural than the last.

  And that wasn’t even the worst part.

  Even if she had never seen one in person, Mondena knew very well what those exorcism rituals meant. She’d heard enough—from countless films and TV dramas, from supposed documentaries, and from those half-whispered, half-boasted “leaks” claiming to come from inside the Church.

  The pattern was always the same: the possessed suffered until their bodies were wrung dry. In the end, they either died in the process, or lived on with a lifetime of trauma and dread.

  She could still clearly recall the scenes she’d watched on old television broadcasts when she was younger: a frail figure bound and pinned to a bed, rope burns livid on their wrists and ankles, joints twisted and bent at impossible angles; priests chanting scripture at the top of their lungs; family members hovering at the edges of the frame, already on the brink of collapse. Beyond that, there were those photographs and scanned documents she’d once stumbled across—faces blurred past recognition, the images grainy and indistinct.

  What stood out weren’t the faces, but the caption beneath them, a single stark line of text in cold print:

  “Deceased following the ritual.”

  So whether the exorcism succeeded or not, the moment she agreed to go, she would be walking straight into a crisis whose ending no one could predict.

  In a rush, Mondena’s mind flicked through every likely outcome she could foresee. If anything went wrong with that child during the ritual, wouldn’t everyone present be dragged into a maelstrom of lawsuits and public outrage? If the family later regretted their decision—or if someone egged them on to claim they’d been “deceived” or “coerced”—what kind of labels would be slapped onto her, her father, and even the entire parish by gawking onlookers and condemning courts?

  This was a country under the rule of law. Even if that family had always been on good terms with her father and the parish, the second something went wrong during the exorcism—or even if the ritual “succeeded” and they decided, out of greed, to turn on them afterward—no one would be able to talk their way out of it. Cameras from the press, trials by social media, subpoenas from the court… each one of those alone would be enough to sentence this family’s future to death in the suffocating pressure cooker of modern society.

  Helplessly, Mondena looked toward her father. In that glance were fear, hesitation, and the barest stirrings of courage—something fragile and almost ready to crest. She held her breath for a few seconds, trying to push the words out slowly:

  Can I… not go?

  Even if it were only a tentative question, even if her father might reconsider after hearing her explanation, she just wanted to know whether there was still the faintest chance of securing herself a way out.

  But in the end, she swallowed it back down.

  Because before the words “Can I not go?” could even make it to her lips, Mr. Redeemed turned his gaze on her—cold, already edged with anger.

  That look was terrifying: hard and glacial, made worse by the blue glare from the television and the yellowish glow of the ceiling light. Together, they painted a grotesque tableau and hurled it straight into her face. She knew that stare too well. It wasn’t simple “displeasure.”

  It was a threat—silent, razor-sharp, and full of warning. It was the eerie prelude that had played out countless times in this house right before the shouting started, right before the violence broke loose.

  As his rough fingers tightened around the cheap glass of wine in his hand, the cup creaked faintly, glass grinding against knuckles with a tiny, grating squeak. Every time she saw that motion, she could almost perfectly predict what would come next: his voice would suddenly rise; the Bible itself, and the words within it, would be wielded as weapons. The glass might be hurled and shattered; her mother would be dragged out and berated alongside her; then would come the worst of the screaming matches, and she would, inevitably, be dragged into the centre of their quarrels and arguments…

  In an instant of dazed dislocation, her thoughts were pulled back into childhood.

  Mr. Redeemed was a devout, extreme Puritan who sold insurance for a living. Every time he came home frustrated by office politics or passed over for promotion, he would drink under the pretext of “sharing in Christ’s grace through communion wine.” He would sit there, glass in one hand and Bible in the other, reading and drinking… After enough nights of absorbing those words and roaming drunk through the house, he began to crown himself a herald of the Gospel.

  Over and over, he used those worn-out doctrines and moral shackles to bind and suppress the thoughts and freedoms of his wife and daughter. In order to flaunt his so-called masculine dignity, authority, and control, Mr. Redeemed would lash out at his naturally timid wife at the slightest pretext. As for young Mondena, she could only cry and quake through those years, living in constant dread.

  Whenever the alcohol began to churn in his system, he would take up the Bible and sit in the middle of the living room, turning the pages one by one, reciting passage after passage: from “Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands” to “Children, obey your parents”; from “discipline” to “punishment.” At the end of each section, the scripture seemed to twist in his mind into a kind of permission, a special dispensation—a licence to vent, a licence to scold, a licence to raise his hand against the people closest to him in the name of God.

  Because of his obsession and rigid fanaticism toward the letter of doctrine, this almost unhinged man had somehow managed to gain the church district’s trust. They allowed him to assist the parish, to “help” spread the Gospel in his own way, and to help gather donations. In church, he barely resembled the man he was at home. He would smile at the elderly congregants, stand at the front and spin tales of how he had “overcome every hardship by faith and the Father’s grace.” And so more and more people were willing to listen, willing to believe him—and, in the end, willing to tuck extra bills into the offering bag.

  With each rant, each rigid harangue, each retelling of scripture and virtue that won him more attention, he grew more arrogant, his behaviour more extreme and vicious. He began to think of himself as a “watchman appointed by the Father,” more qualified than ordinary believers to accuse and condemn others, even entitled to be angry on God’s behalf. Once he stepped back through the front door, that “special authority granted by Heaven” transformed into absolute dominion over his wife and daughter—he would decide what they believed, what they said, what they were allowed to think, how they should pray, how they should live, and even how they were to face everything that came after death.

  Because his personality and conduct grew ever more twisted, Mondena’s mother had quietly set aside the thought of divorce. She knew perfectly well that no matter how the court might rule—whether she “won” or “lost”—this unreasonable man would still find ways to deal with her and their daughter on his own terms. She was terrified of his revenge, terrified that his malice would spill over onto the child. In this tight little circle, surrounded by the church and the neighbours, she knew that if she left with her daughter, she would not only be staring down financial hardship but also the pointed fingers and whispered judgments of fellow believers and “concerned bystanders.”

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  So she chose silence. She chose endurance. Day after day of backing down and compromising, in exchange for a home that, at least on the surface, would not collapse overnight.

  And Mondena, too, had no choice but to endure this tyrant of the tongue, living without a moment’s peace. From a very young age, she learned to read Mr. Redeemed’s moods: learned to keep utterly quiet until he finished his final “Amen”; learned to shut her mouth the instant his hand tightened around the wineglass. The fear and nervous vigilance accumulated over the years did not fade as she grew older. Instead, they hardened into a thin, tough membrane wrapped around her bones and nerves. The slightest shift in her father’s tone or expression would yank that membrane taut, and she would curl in on herself before she even realized she was doing it.

  Back in the present, Mondena bit down on her teeth and forced herself to swallow every word she’d wanted to say.

  She gave a wooden, mechanical nod.

  The nod was so slight that even she barely felt it, as if her body had reacted half a beat ahead of her mind. It was a reflex she had honed over years, a skill learned purely for survival.

  Seeing this, Mr. Redeemed relaxed his grip on the wineglass by a fraction and turned his gaze away from her, drawing it back to the space between the television and the Bible. He shifted in his seat, adjusting his posture as though that suffocating moment just now had been nothing more than a minor interruption in an otherwise casual conversation.

  The light in the living room remained dim and yellowish. On the television, the anchor was still droning on about “financial scandals in the Church”; the host’s voice and the experts’ commentary clashed and overlapped in the air. The fridge hummed dully. The radiator ticked and sighed. Together, they formed the kind of background noise Mondena had long since grown used to—but had never truly adapted to.

  In her consciousness, the word “Saturday” was hammered into the still-fragile wall of her heart like a nail driven in with a gun. With every beat of her pulse, the point drove deeper. From this moment until the day of the exorcism, there would be no such thing as “rest” for her. She would simply lie awake in a room permeated with smoke and alcohol, eyes open, forced to wait until she was marched into an even deeper nightmare.

  Saturday came beneath a leaden sky, the air thick with low cloud. A fine rain still wandered in and out of the wind.

  Mondena followed Mr. Redeemed and two priests in black suits carrying combination-locked cases up to the door of Mrs. Victoria’s house. After they rang the bell, a tall middle-aged man slowly opened the white, carved gate with the little cross set into it.

  “Fathers William and Richard—welcome,” the man said, respectfully shaking both their hands before turning toward the father and daughter. “This is Mrs. Victoria’s husband, Matthew. You met him a few years ago,” Mr. Redeemed supplied.

  “John, I’m very grateful you could come today,” Mr. Matthew said, and pulled Mr. Redeemed into a warm hug. As for Mondena, she hung back, shy as ever, saying nothing. Even when she stepped forward to shake his hand, she looked stiff and awkward, and it took her a long moment to force out a small, strained: “Good morning.”

  Once everyone had been ushered inside, the scene that greeted them made them stop in their tracks.

  Every scrap of wallpaper and every book in the house had been torn apart. Tables and chairs were flung every which way. Even the crystal ornaments on the chandelier had been stripped away, leaving only bare hooks and twisted fittings behind.

  Then, from upstairs, came the sound of that voice—still shouting, still feral and awful.

  Mrs. Victoria, her tears long since spent and starting anew, looked up at the newcomers. She pushed herself shakily to her feet and nodded in greeting, only to slump back down onto a dining chair whose backrest had already been half hacked away. Her voice caught as she began to speak.

  “We’ve tried every institution that could offer medical observation. We’ve tried countless supposedly effective short-term treatments. But every doctor and every therapist has said the same: there is nothing physically wrong with her. And the psychologists insist it’s all in her head—delusions, dissociation, a fractured personality…” Her words broke, and she began sobbing harder.

  “Only the few of us here have seen what she really becomes. Whenever someone tries to examine her or give her therapy, she plays the innocent victim, like some poor, harmless child. Look…” She nodded toward her husband, and together they rolled up their sleeves.

  What they revealed made even the priests draw in a breath: livid, jagged claw marks running up their arms, and—worse—a single dark bruise shaped like a handprint that could not belong to anything human.

  “I know the Church doesn’t dare attempt exorcism lightly,” Mrs. Victoria went on, voice shaking. “We thought of going to the Catholics, but we’re Puritans—they cut us off the moment we mentioned it. And even if they did agree, even if Rome sent out one of their own, we know how their rites end. Whether they ‘succeed’ or not, my child would be shattered. Instead of spending months begging them and losing more time, I beg you—do what you can. For the Lord’s sake, save my poor daughter… save this family that’s already falling apart.”

  Tear-streaked, Mrs. Victoria pushed herself up from the chair, only to sink straight to her knees before them, then collapse forward, spent, onto the floor.

  At once, both priests and Mr. Matthew rushed to her side, lifting her back up and helping her into the chair again. Someone pressed a cup of hot tea into her hands; someone else brought chocolate, murmuring to her, trying to soothe the edges of her unraveling composure.

  At that moment, the doorbell rang again—“Ding-dong.”

  Mondena noticed the flicker of light in Mr. Matthew’s eyes. He hurried to the door and returned a moment later with a middle-aged man in a cloak, lugging a suitcase.

  Bringing the guest over to the group, Mr. Matthew suddenly looked flustered, tripping over his words. “This is Mr. Jonathan, ah, he’s…!”

  He didn’t get the chance to finish. The instant Father William took in the newcomer’s attire—and the silver pentagram pendant gleaming on his chest—the priest’s expression turned razor-sharp.

  “You brought in a pagan sorcerer to meddle in this?” he snapped. His voice bristled with anger and contempt as he pinned the still-faltering Mr. Matthew with a hard stare.

  “I just—I know this is wrong!” Matthew blurted. “I’m not trying to blaspheme Christ or our faith, but this situation is too dangerous, too strange. One more person helping us… it might mean one more layer of protection for all of us, one more chance for this to succeed. Please, I beg you…” Two hot streams of tears spilled from his eyes. “I love Christ. I truly do. But I can’t bear to see my daughter like this forever. I can’t stand the thought that she might… die…”

  It was almost impossible to reconcile: this man, nearly 6‘4, now standing there like a lost child, covering his face with his hands—as if the moment he let go, he would fall apart entirely.

  Mondena stood behind Mr. Redeemed, shoulders tight, watching everything unfold with mounting unease. She knew all too well how the Church viewed heresy. The last thing she wanted was to see these two sides come to blows here and now over doctrine.

  Jonathan ignored the strange looks being thrown his way. He dragged a chair over, sat down as if he were in his own living room, and flipped open the heavy suitcase to begin laying out his ritual tools.

  “I’ll go first,” he said, almost lazily. “In a situation like this, you watching me and me watching you until we’re all shouting at each other is pointless. The kid’s already in that state—getting her free of the thing riding her is what matters. And anyway, once this is over, whoever takes the credit, it’s still collaboration. If it works, I go home and keep doing my magical work and writing books to pay the bills; you get a new story to tell from the pulpit to draw in more believers and more donations. Everyone gets what they want. Why be so stiff when we’ve got a common enemy right in front of us?”

  As he spoke, he unfolded a thick ritual rug painted with a coiling serpent and lines of Hebrew.

  Mr. Redeemed could barely contain himself. He half-rose, ready to argue with the pagan in front of him, but Father Richard caught his hand and pushed him gently back down. The priest thought for a moment, then gave him a strange, meaningful look—one that clearly said not yet—as though tacitly agreeing to Jonathan’s strategy for now.

  After that, Fathers Richard and William hurried off to the washroom to scrub their hands and change. They donned their vestments, reverently opened their own cases, and brought out a carefully preserved copy of the Rituale Romanum from the last century, a golden chalice and a bottle of holy water, then the Eucharist. They approached Mr. Redeemed, Mondena, and the couple in turn, making the sign of blessing over each one, then led them to stand near the living room sofa to wait in silence.

  Meanwhile, Jonathan had changed into a robe densely inked with Hebrew letters. He unfurled the nearly two-metre rug and stepped into its centre, methodically arranging his tools: a collapsible hazelwood table, a censer, and brass candlesticks. He anointed a wand engraved with divine names, Latin, and Hebrew with cinnamon oil, then set up a round mirror of carved obsidian on the makeshift altar.

  Only once all that was finished did he reach again into the suitcase and draw out a wooden box. He lifted the lid, folded back the white cloth inside with deliberate care, and removed a hand-crafted, hand-painted Stele of Revealing.【Note: The original “Stele of Revealing” is an ancient Egyptian votive stone housed in the Cairo Museum. It was dedicated to a Theban priest named Ankh-af-na-khonsu, its scene chiefly venerating Ra-Horakhty—“Ra of the Horizon,” the falcon-headed solar god with a sun disk. In the early twentieth century, the magician Aleister Crowley claimed he had been led—by divine prompting and his wife Rose—to this very stele in Cairo. He renamed it the Stele of Revealing, identified it in the museum as Stele 666, and elevated it into a key symbol of his Thelemic system】

  Jonathan set the miniature stele reverently in front of the mirror.

  When all was in place, he began burning a blend of frankincense, myrrh, and benzoin—incense compounded for banishing. As white smoke curled upward, he lifted a ritual dagger and faced the four quarters in turn, beginning the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.【Note: The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) comes from nineteenth-century Western ceremonial magic, especially orders such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The operator turns to each cardinal direction, tracing radiant pentagrams in the air and vibrating divine names, symbolically “cleansing” the space and themselves—driving out confusion, fear, and disharmony from both environment and psyche.】

  As he faced north, finishing the last pentagram, he thrust the dagger forward and intoned the final name: “AGLA.”

  Only then did the possessed girl, Mary, finally begin to descend the stairs.

  The moment they saw her face, everyone present sucked in a sharp breath. Mondena started shaking from head to toe, fingers digging into a cushion on the sofa.

  Mary’s skin looked as if it had been painted over in ash-grey, completely devoid of blood. Her posture was wrong, joints moving with a faintly inhuman looseness. Her eyes had rolled white, and from those pale sockets streaks of blood-tears kept seeping down her cheeks. She shuffled slowly to the edge of the rune-covered rug, staring dully at the carefully arranged ritual tools and at Jonathan, who continued to chant in Hebrew and Latin without a pause.

  Seeing the target now clearly before him, Jonathan’s expression tightened. He raised the wooden wand and levelled it directly at Mary, launching into the exorcism itself:

  “Domine luminis, audi vocem meam,abige umbras ab hoc servo tuo.Per verbum quod fuit ante tempora,frange vincula tenebrarum et solve nodos.

  Spiritus sine nomine, audi mandatum meum:non in carne ista habitabis,non in domo ista manebis,non in sanguine isto poteris.

  Per ignem purum, per aquam clara,per terram firmam et aerem vivum,praecipio tibi: solve, discede, tace.Sic dictum est; sic fiet..【Lord of Light, hearken to my voice;

  drive the shadows from this, Thy servant.

  By the Word that was before all ages,

  break the chains of darkness and unbind every knot.

  Spirit without a name, hear now my command:

  thou shalt not dwell in this flesh,

  thou shalt not remain within this house,

  thou shalt hold no power in this blood.

  By the pure fire, by the shining water,

  by the steadfast earth and the living air,

  I charge thee: loosen, depart, be silent.

  So it is spoken; so shall it be. - English Version】”

  No sooner had the final words left his mouth than Mary’s expression twisted violently. She dropped like a stone, slamming onto the floor and screaming as her body thrashed.

  Seeing their daughter collapse, Mrs. Victoria and Mr. Matthew shot to their feet in panic.

  What came out of Mary’s mouth was not a normal cry. A chorus of warped voices poured out—male and female layered together, by turns shrill and guttural, shifting through different tones and timbres, as if several people were speaking and shrieking through the same throat. The sound clawed at everyone’s eardrums and nerves.

  All around them, glass began to shatter: vases, picture frames, the television screen itself, breaking one after another in rapid succession. The chandelier in the dining room started to sway, bolts groaning, until it tore loose and crashed down.

  At the same time, the poor girl began retching up thick brown liquid. Her limbs jerked and convulsed uncontrollably, as if some invisible shockwave were rattling her soul and body from the inside out.

  Confronted with such a response, Jonathan only chanted louder and faster, forcing more power into the words. Mary’s screams slowly shifted; the grotesque chorus peeled away until her own voice emerged beneath it all.

  She began to beg him. Begged him to stop tormenting her. Then she lifted her eyes, wild and pleading, to stare at her parents.

  Mrs. Victoria took a stumbling step forward, unable to hold back any longer—but Jonathan raised one hand sharply, gesturing her to stay where she was.

  As the last paragraph of the conjuration left his lips, Mary suddenly shrieked and vomited up a solid clump of pitch-black, mud-like matter. Then she arched backward and collapsed.

  The house fell still.

  With no more phenomena breaking loose around them, Jonathan let out a long, heavy breath. “That should be it,” he murmured. A few drops of sweat fell from his brow and sank into the opened pages of the book on the makeshift altar.

  Everyone else exhaled at once, the tension in the room loosening. They began to move, ready to rush forward and help Mary to her feet.

  That was when the girl lying on the floor began to laugh.

  The sound spilling out of her was still that same twisted chorus, the same sick blend of voices.

  Hands flipping, limbs contorting into a grotesque, spider-like posture, she pushed herself upright in a single fluid motion and rose to stand squarely before them.

  “You can’t even tell the difference between theatre and an actual exorcism！” she sneered. “Looks like you’re just another hack who can memorise lines and daydream.”

  She flicked her wrist.

  Jonathan was yanked straight up into the air as if hooked by some invisible line. Eyes wide with terror, he dangled helplessly above his own circle. Mary, utterly unconcerned, stepped barefoot across the rug scrawled with sigils and scripture, then reached out to idly thumb through the pages laid out on the altar.

  “Hebrew, Latin, Greek mythology, a bit of Egyptology…” she went on, her voice dripping contempt. “A pack of half-trained dilettantes patching scraps together and thinking that’ll actually do anything? You really went all out, didn’t you? You mortals are hilarious.”

  Her gaze slid sideways.

  Jonathan flew like a rag being flung aside, smashing into the wall where a crucifix hung. There was a sharp, sickening crack. He screamed—his left arm had twisted a full ninety degrees on impact, bone snapping under the force. Pain like molten iron ripped through him, leaving him shuddering uncontrollably on the floor.

  Mary ignored his cries as if they were no more than background noise. She calmly dragged a chair into the centre of the magic circle and sat down in the middle of the array.

  “If this pathetic rug could really keep ‘us’ outside,” she said, crossing one leg over the other, “then nobody on earth would ever have to think about exorcism again. You are pitiful—you’ve spent all these years studying, and you still haven’t grasped something this simple.”

  She tapped a finger mockingly against one of the opened books.

  “You really believe a system that cobbled together out of copied, mismatched stories has much truth in it at all?”

  As she was speaking, Mary picked up the hand-painted wooden Stele of Revealing and glanced at it.

  “Bought pigments?” she said. “You pathetic, toxic waste. I actually held out a shred of hope for you. And even the board is something you paid for. You want authority and power, but you can’t be bothered to spend a few years growing your own trees? I really don’t understand—after all these years of so-called ascetic practice, you’ve managed to train yourself into a walking financial loss. What exactly was your plan?”

  With that, she set what to her was nothing more than a cheap trinket back down on the altar.

  “Anyway,” Mary went on, turning her head toward Jonathan, who was still trembling against the wall with his broken arm, “there were flaws in that incantation. It’s not that you don’t know it by heart—it’s that real secret rites are not the same thing as fairy tales for frightening children. Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. Since you’re so desperate to grasp power, I’ll peel off a couple of lines from the very spells you’ve spent your whole life trying to understand. Come on. Repeat after me. This is how the Names and the words of power are supposed to sound…”

  As the thick, harsh syllables of some ancient tongue rolled from Mary’s mouth, Jonathan’s jaw was pried open by an unseen force and his voice was dragged into lockstep with hers. He parroted every word, but the arrogance and certainty from before were gone. Blood began to seep from his eyes, ears, nostrils, and lips, running in thin, bright streams. The deep, resonant voice he had used for his own ritual dwindled, thinning to a ragged, breathless rasp.

  “Feel it?” Mary asked, watching him cough and choke on blood, drawing harsh, shallow breaths. “Well? Want to tell me how it compares to all those ‘ancient sources’ you scraped off the internet and out of library stacks, and the little patchwork of concepts you stitched together?”

  When he still couldn’t form a single coherent sentence, she lost interest and began idly toying with the candlestick on the table.

  “Looks like it is a bit different, isn’t it.” She clicked her tongue. “By your own logic, if your magic worked half as well as you claimed, you people might have actually broadened your horizons and taken a good look at the world outside your fairy stories. Change careers, earn some real money, buy yourself a proper robe. Stop turning up in front of me in that sackcloth rag with bargain-bin ritual tools. It’s embarrassing. Tsk, tsk… after all these years—time, knowledge, money—seems you’ve ended up with none of the three.”

  With that, Mary turned toward the altar again, fixing her gaze on the polished surface of the obsidian mirror.

  “Hm. For once you had a flicker of sense,” she mused. “Aside from your cheap printed rug, the shoddy machine embroidery on your back, and those gold-plated toys you call instruments, you did at least bring one real thing today. That must have cost you a lot.”

  Her fingers drifted up to her own cheek and hairline.

  “Ah, this burr on the horn… seven hundred years, and no matter what I do, it never quite smooths out,” she murmured.

  Everyone’s gaze followed hers to the mirror.

  Reflected there was no longer the girl Mary, but a fully revealed demon: a face twisted and inhuman, its skin etched with crawling, shifting lines, its eyes long and olive-shaped, gleaming a murky, brown-green light. The markings on its face writhed and rearranged themselves with each tiny motion. Blood-tears poured ceaselessly from its eyes, and from its mouth spilled a constant haze of black smoke, threaded through with faint red glow and drifting sparks.

  “Oh, right. This body about at its limit,” Mary said lightly. “You Puritans…”

  She turned her head a fraction, looking lazily over at the assembled believers.

  “…care to come at me all at once?”

  Mondena had long since been shocked into silence by the blood and violence. She trembled uncontrollably as she stared at her father. Mr. Redeemed was drenched in cold sweat, hands buried in his pockets, fists slowly clenching. The others were exchanging helpless, terrified looks. For the priests, this was their first time standing in front of something that was not a metaphor, not a parable, but a real, manifest spirit. For the poor parents, this might be the day they were torn forever from the daughter they loved.

  “How long do you guys going take?” Mary drawled. “If you can’t manage anything, I’ll just kill her and move on to another host. You’re all unbearably boring.”

  Her gaze slid toward Mondena, who was still shaking.

  “She looks…” Mary started—and in the obsidian mirror, the demon’s pupils flickered, a tiny, almost imperceptible tremor. It gave a small tilt of the head, bared its teeth in a smile, and let out a long, deep breath through its nose.

  Then, with a casual lift of its hand, an invisible force slammed down over every window and doorframe in the house, sealing them as if behind glass.

  “There is nowhere to go” Mary said, her voice echoing in that eerie, layered chorus. “Don’t just stand there.Get on with it.”

  Fathers William and Richard hastily slipped on their purple stoles, pressed their lips to the crucifix, and traced the sign of blessing in the air. Then they set the host and chalice which already filled of holy water on the table, opened the Rituale Romanum, and began leafing through the pages in a final, hurried review.

  “In a moment, you’ll repeat after me,” Father Richard said, his voice carrying a faint tremor. “Whatever it says—do not let your minds wander.”

  The people gathered there exchanged glances, held one another’s eyes for a heartbeat, then each of them gave a small, resolute nod.

  “O God, who for the salvation of the human race have established the great sacrament of water, graciously hear our prayer and pour out your blessing upon this water, that your creature, in serving your mysteries, may obtain the power of grace: may it drive out demons and banish disease; and when it is sprinkled in the homes of the faithful, may it deliver them from every harm. Let no evil spirit be able to remain there, and let all the hidden plots of the enemy come to nothing. Grant that your faithful, as they call upon your holy Name, may be kept safe from every assault and enjoy true peace. Through Christ our Lord. Amen..”

  “Scripture written and voted on by men at the Council of Nicaea— seriously, that’s all you got?” Mary scoffed. “Ah, whatever. Go on, chant. Oh—hold that thought a second, I’m sitting a bit too far away.”

  She rose with a mocking little stretch, sauntered into the kitchen, and fetched a bottle of whisky. Then she drifted back at an unhurried pace. As she passed Jonathan’s half-latched suitcase, she gave it a careless, playful kick. The kick itself was nothing—but the inner straps slipped loose, and a gold-mounted crystal sphere, along with a wax tablet carved with sigils, tumbled out onto the floor.

  Mary crouched down to look, her expression twisting once more with naked disgust.

  “A shew-stone,” she said. “How quaint.”【Shew-stone (also spelled “show-stone”) literally means “stone for showing”—a crystal or obsidian mirror used in Western ceremonial magic and early scrying. In the sixteenth century, John Dee and his skryer Edward Kelley claimed to receive “angelic language” and visions through such a stone. During ritual, the operator gazes into its surface, letting the mind slip into a trance-like state in which symbolic scenes, letters, or spirits may appear】

  “And Sigillum Dei Aemeth!” she added, lip curling.【The Sigillum Dei Aemeth—often rendered “Seal of the God of Truth”—comes from medieval mystical tradition and John Dee’s system. Traditionally cast in beeswax, it is a round “seal” etched with concentric circles, stars, and divine names. In Dee’s practice, a large Sigillum was set at the center of the holy table beneath the shew-stone, with four smaller ones under the table’s legs, forming a space bounded and protected by sacred geometry. In later Golden Dawn–style systems, it became a solemn emblem of high-grade protection and authority in advanced ritual work.】

  “These little contingencies of yours are honestly revolting,” she went on. “In all these centuries, not one of you managed the funds to follow John’s notes properly and mount the thing in solid gold? you’re really hopeless.But Anyway—since you’re so eager for revelation and oracles, why don’t you go cool off somewhere else and have one?”

  She lifted her hand.

  The Sigillum Dei Aemeth shot up from the floor like a hurled brick, smashed into Jonathan’s head, and dropped him senseless. Before he could even groan, an invisible force wrenched his jaw open with a grisly crack, tearing it from its hinge. Then Mary shoved the crystal sphere—mount and all—straight between his teeth, ramming it deep into his gaping mouth.

  Mary finally dropped herself onto the living-room sofa.

  “Sorry,” she said lightly, “I threw up way too much coffee just now. Even if I don’t have taste buds while I’m riding her, this kid still needs water. You don’t mind, right?”

  Before anyone could answer, she reached straight for the golden chalice the priests had set out and drained the holy water in one long swallow.

  “It needs more salt, and the water’s weak,” she remarked, almost bored. “Next time you lot recite, try sounding a little more devout. And stop leaning on Psalm 103 every single time—bring out something I haven’t already heard a thousand times from your lips. Don’t fob me off with the kind of prayers you use to pacify parishioners and the media.”

  With that, she flicked the stopper off a nearby bottle and poured Scotch single malt into the chalice.

  “To your successfully exorcism,” she said. “Oh, right—by the way, I know the name of every single one of you here. And my name is Belphegor. Since we’re all baring our souls today, why keep up the coy act? I’m not like those pious hypocrites who can’t even bring themselves to show their real hearts.”

  The moment the demon tossed out its own name so casually, even mockingly, the two priests went sheet-white.

  In their minds, only two thoughts were left, circling like vultures: If the exorcism works, will the girl survive? If it fails, will any of us leave this house in one piece?

  Mondena’s knees went weak; she could barely stay upright.

  Beside her, Mr Redeemed dug his nails hard into his own thigh just to keep himself focused.

  As for the poor couple, they were already sinking into a black pit of despair. It was as if they could see, in advance, their daughter’s corpse—twisted, ruined. Snot and tears streamed down their faces in an endless blur.

  “What’s wrong?” Mary drawled, ignoring the circle of human beings altogether. She was watching the demon’s own shadow, cast huge upon the wall, idly toying with one crooked spike of her horn. “Not quite what your exorcist movies and church pamphlets promised you, is it? Stop dithering. I’ve got other things to do.”

  “Lord, have mercy.Christ, have mercy.Holy Mary, Mother of God,pray for us.

  Holy Michael, Gabriel and Raphael,Holy Angels of God,Saint Elijah,Saint John the Baptist,Saint Joseph,Holy Patriarchs and Prophets,Saint Peter and Saint Paul,Saint Andrew,Saint John and Saint James,All holy Apostles and Evangelists,Saint Mary Magdalene,All disciples of the Lord,Saint Stephen,Saint Lawrence,Saints Perpetua and Felicity,All holy Martyrs,Saint Gregory,pray for us…”

  Forcing down their terror, everyone tried to steady themselves and intone the Litany together. Their voices overlapped in an unsteady chant that shook at the edges.

  “I command you, unclean spirit, whoever you are, along with all your minions now attacking this servant of God, by the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit, by the coming of our Lord for judgment, that you tell me by some sign your name, and the day and hour of your departure. I command you, moreover, to obey me to the letter, I who am a minister of God despite my unworthiness; nor shall you be emboldened to harm in any way this creature of God, or the bystanders, or any of their possessions.”

  They had just reached this passage when the two priests suddenly realized something was so wrong.

  Mary—eyes fixed unblinking on them—was reciting the text along with them, mimicking their cadence perfectly, her voice twisted into that same uncanny timbre.

  In that instant, their faith and their entire framework of reality pitched to the edge of collapse.

  “Am I went to far?” Mary asked lazily. “Or is it that you’d prefer me to behave like in the movies—The Exorcist and all that—screaming filth at you, dragging all those petty, sordid secrets you hide in your hearts out into the light, so you can feel like the scene is more ‘authentic’?”

  She snorted softly.

  “But honestly? I couldn’t care less about your rotting scandals. Each one of you is wasting good air just by being alive. What gives you the right to drag all that chickenshit drama onto the table and squander My time?”

  “O God, you see how we, through weakness, are lacking in faith.We humbly beseech you for this your servant:drive from her every evil spirit,restore to her the full freedom of your children,that, united with your Saints and your elect,she may praise you for ever.Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  Father William and John forced themselves to go on, their voices hoarse with fear. Father Richard’s voice, however, had begun to tremble badly; his consonants blurred, his words slurred into one another.

  Across from them, Victoria and Matthew were already on their knees, clinging to each other, sobbing so hard their shoulders shook.

  “Repeat after me,” Mary said conversationally. “With Faith and Confidence. Don’t drop a single word.

  “Ancient enemy of the human race, I cast you out;depart from this image of God, Mary

  Our Lord Jesus Christ commands you—he whose humility has overthrown your pride,whose generosity has destroyed your envy,whose goodness has crushed your cruelty.

  Father of lies, be silent;do not hinder this servant of God,from blessing and praising the Most High.Jesus Christ commands you,he who is the Wisdom of God,the radiance of Truth,whose words are spirit and life.

  Unclean spirit,go forth from this servant of God;give place to the Holy Spirit!

  Jesus Christ commands you,the Son of God and Son of Man,born of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin,spotless and without stain,who by his own precious Blood,has washed the world clean.

  Therefore, Satan, begone!In the name of Jesus Christ, depart!He is the finger of the mighty God,who casts you out and lays waste your kingdom.By the faith and prayer of the Church, go hence!

  By the power of the holy Cross, flee at once!On that Cross,the meek Lamb who was slain for us,Our Lord Jesus Christ,has delivered us from your savage dominion.

  He is God, who lives and reigns,for ever and ever. Amen.”

  Mary recited the words in a level, almost bored tone, as if reading out a shopping list.

  That was the moment the last supports under the priests’ minds gave way.

  It felt to them as if their souls and thoughts had been ripped up by the roots and held, dangling, in a vacuum.

  Both priests sagged where they stood, then collapsed, half kneeling, half sitting, covering their faces as raw sobs broke out of them.

  In Mr Redeemed’s eyes, the final glimmer of resistance went out; he, too, sank slowly to his knees.

  Seeing their reactions, Mary let out a weary sigh.

  “Honestly,” she said, almost disappointed, “each generation weaker than the last. And here I was, kindly giving you my name.”

  She grabbed the golden chalice and the whisky bottle in one hand, lifted the other to undo the invisible seals she had set on the doors and windows, and headed upstairs without another glance.

  What remained in the living room was the sound of middle-aged men sobbing helplessly, their faith cracked wide open, their prayers hanging in the air like smoke that had nowhere left to go.