Amos agrees with a hand gesture to move the game along.
“Alright, here we go. Where did you grow up and what is your family like?”
“I grew up in the small town of Springfield, Oregon. I have one sibling, a sister, named Olive. My parents, Grant and Sibley, own and operate a marijuana farm. They devote most of their time to that. I don’t really keep in touch with any of them.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-nine.”
“Did you earn a bachelor's degree?”
“Yes.”
“What was it in?”
“Philosophy.”
“That's interesting that you would end up an audio tech.”
"I ended up with a lot of experience with my first profession. I followed my bachelors with a seminary."
"You were a priest?"
"Bingo."
"How do you get audio experience as a priest? Did you perform exorcisms?!,” Hollis asked.
"Shut up, Hollis," I say, holding my hand over his mouth.
“As you probably remember, churches typically put on quite a production that required audio expertise. Yes, I performed a few exorcisms. My favorite color is red, I enjoy reading, and long walks on the beach, blah, blah, blah. I think that was two minutes. Now, is it my turn to ask the questions?”
“Your two minutes are up, Leo. The floor is all yours, Amos,” Hollis says in his best game show host voice.
“Hollis has already given me a pretty clear description of you, so I’m going to get hypothetical. If you could build a perfect world, what would it look like?”
His mouth is in a flat line, and his eyes don’t waiver from mine. His hands stay folded together on top of the table. Is this a coincidence, or does he know? He definitely knows, but I need to see this out as if he knows nothing.
“Well, that’s easy. Everyone takes their part in caring for the planet and each other. There is no war or hunger. Everything else should just take care of itself,” I respond.
He looks me dead in the eye and asks, “Did Michael make that weird popcorn in the microwave when he met with you, too?”
I turn to Hollis grinning ear to ear. We have our guy.
Amos
August 2028
7
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The Boy Who Haunts Me
I spring up, gasping for air and my arms are flailing. It feels like an elephant was sitting on my chest, and the drumming sound of my heart pounding fills my head. The sheets are drenched in sweat, and chills run through my body. It is the same nightmare every single time. I’m standing on a street in the middle of the night. The streetlight shines down on me. There is a man wearing a trench coat and a hat standing in the shadows, maybe fifty feet away from me. He slowly starts walking in my direction and then, as if we are in a movie being fast forwarded, he comes at me like a freight train until he is right in front of my face. He looks like any average man, other than his yellow, bloodshot eyes. Then he opens his mouth to speak and reveals his rotting, foul teeth. They are sharp and skinny, like fat toothpicks jammed into his black gums. His breath smells like vermin had crawled inside of his mouth and died.
He grins ear to ear. “Faith is dead. Just like he is now. You killed him, and we are coming for you next.”
The concrete below me starts to melt and swallow me whole.
I can go on for months without disruption, only to find the next several months are filled with the same vision night after night. I can’t say that I’ve been spared the scarring of traumatic events. I watched my mother bury an 18-year-old boy beneath the row of maple trees south of our fields when I was nine years old. His name was Crew. The seed driller needed repair, so my father had jacked it up and asked Crew to get underneath to repair it. The jack he used didn’t hold and the drill came crashing down onto his abdomen His eyes splayed wide open as the blood pooled out from underneath him onto the concrete garage floor. It was an honest farm equipment accident, but they didn’t want the bad press. When I suggested that we call the police, my mother slapped me so hard across the face that it left the red outline of her hand for days.
“You speak a word of this to anyone and you’ll end up in a foster home! You know what those people are like, don’t you?” she threatened.
I knew well enough to fear ending up in the system. Those kids were given just enough to survive, and most of them were suicidal by the time they hit puberty. The year I turned 12 I told her that I was going be a priest one day, so I could help people before they became like them. She laughed in my face and told my father of my “pathetic plans.” Begrudgingly, I hauled the containers full of food scraps to the compost pile, watered the crops, and kept my mouth shut for six more years. My senior year of high school, I kept a calendar and a permanent marker in the drawer of my nightstand. Just before bed, I would cross that day off. It was one day less until I could pack my things and never look back.
It’s always the same boy who haunts me. I remember every minuscule detail of that night. Connor Reynolds is only 12 when the Catholic church’s investigative team shows up at his family’s doorstep. It is the same drill every time. A representative of the church is accompanied by an appointed psychologist and a medical professional. The church’s first ambition has always been to prove this was not possession of a demonic entity. It received thousands of requests for exorcism every year, the majority of which were proven unnecessary. Too often, it was someone looking for something else to blame, other than their ill family member. It was a service that put the church at risk, so it should only be performed when someone’s behavior could not be explained by any other medical means.
Connor’s family went through the same investigation that every family goes through. A series of questions to determine his mental state, followed by days of observation. The team witnesses the boy trying to poison his little sister with anticoagulants. He hadn’t realized that they had placed cameras in the kitchen where he was mixing them into her sippy cup. A few days later, he nearly suffocates his mother with her pillow in the middle of the night. His father put locks on his doors after that evening. They had tried numerous medications and burned through six therapists that specialized in the violent type of behavior Connor was exhibiting. The family wants to place him in foster care to protect their daughter, but they can’t live with the guilt associated with the torment he would bring unsuspecting families. He would go for weeks refusing to eat. His teachers express concerns and child protective services paid them many visits. They are not Catholic. In fact, they aren’t of any religious affiliation. The mother explains how she spent years trying to convince herself that there was a logical explanation to his behavior. That was until the day she sees him talking to himself in their bathroom mirror.
“The voice coming out of his little body was not his own. I knew then, that something evil was inside of my baby.”
After exhausting every possibility, the church decides that the Rite of Major Exorcism is necessary, and that I am to execute it. It is my second exorcism. The first went just as planned, no complications. This feels different, and I should have requested that another priest perform the exorcism. I proceed with an assistant from the church. The room upstairs has been prepared ahead of time. All the wall decor and personal defects are removed to prevent injury. We bind his limbs using the same equipment a mental institution would use on their patients. Over the years, this proved to prevent accidents. Once everything is in place, we begin. I am going through the appropriate prayers and scriptures until my mind starts drawing a blank. It’s pertinent that we use the exact words from the Bible. The procedure cannot be improvised. I look down to my book and start to search for the words when the boy lets out the guttural laugh of a haggard old man. He spews words in a language I don’t understand. The temperature in the room plummets at least thirty degrees, and his hatred filled the room like a thick fog.