Shriek

A bestial howl sends shivers and murmured prayers through the villagers gathered in Kervan’s stone chapel, kneeling between wooden pews in the flickering light of hundreds of candelabras. Cold stars, unaided by even a sliver of moon, give scant pinpricks of light to the darkness of the village outside the chapel, where two strong men struggle with a thrashing and shrieking boy.

“Come on, now. No use struggling,” Rowan grunts. The boy yowls and squirms in response, then bites one of the hands trying to restrain him.

“Ow! That’ll be enough of that!” Fenwik exclaims as he jerks his knee into the boy’s ribs, eliciting a high-pitched yelp of pain from the young captive.

“Should never be this difficult to bring a boy this young to chapel, even if he is big for his age,” Rowan grumbles while the boy groans in pain, his thrashing much diminished. “Think Father Bertram’s right about him?”

“Ain’t never put much stock in demonic possessions. But can’t say as Merrick don’t discipline the lad enough, and have yet to know Father Bertram to be wrong ‘bout anything.”

“True enough, that. C’mon now, Zeke, ‘t’aint as bad as all this fuss. We’re tryin’ to help you.” Both men grunt as they hoist the boy, Zeke, completely aloft and push open the doors of the chapel.

***~O~***

On the other side of Kervan, a woman’s scream pierces the night. A few guttering candles provide meager light to two women in a one-room cottage, one in bed and the other crushing herbs with a mortar and pestle.

“Easy there, Mara. Child’ll come with or without all that,” the woman with the herbs assures the other.

“It HURTS!” Mara wails, and then her breath catches and her eyes go wide before she screams again. “Don’t you have…anything…to help that, Kala?”

“Just a moment. These herbs will help, if we mix them with rosewater and…here. Drink this.” Kala helps Mara sit up long enough to take a drink from a bowl of herbs and rosewater, then sets the bowl on a nightstand and wipes her hands on her apron. “Now, just lie back down and try to breathe. I’ve got some other things to help this baby come. You’re going to be all right.”

Mara takes a deep breath, but then her muscles clench and she screams again. “HAAAAAMIIIIISH! Hamish, help me!”

***~O~***

Hamish doesn’t hear his wife’s cries from inside the chapel. His attention is fixed on Zeke, his cousin’s son, as Rowan and Fenwik drag the flailing boy down the center aisle, screeching  like a wild thing. Hamish and other men hold the candelabras along the aisle steady, lest Zeke’s thrashing knock them down. The last thing they need tonight is a fire.

At the end of the center aisle, surrounded by candles and standing before an altar with a basin of holy water, stands a priest in dark robes. Father Bertram’s dark, piercing gaze never wavers from Zeke’s twisting body. The elderly priest begins to chant guttural prayers through his long gray beard and pace the front of the chapel, sprinkling holy water around the area where he will perform the sacred ceremony. Every time his chanting pauses, the villagers in the chapel feel compelled to respond in unison: Fiaer’shallah, Make It So.

Zeke’s eyes grow wide and his fruitless struggles become more frantic as Rowan and Fenwik carry him closer to the chanting, pacing priest. Again and again he screams: “HELP ME! SOMEONE HELP ME!”

But no one seems to understand him or care.

***~O~***

Mara can hear the boy’s shrieks from the chapel whenever she isn’t screaming herself, and it makes her uneasy.

“Hope they get that business done with soon,” Kala mutters as she rubs Mara’s belly with an ointment she says will help the labor. Mara hasn’t noticed that any of Kala’s remedies have had any effect, but she won’t say so. Since Hamish refused to be here, Kala is all she has, and she’ll do anything not to deliver this child alone. Just a few weeks ago, Lana went into labor while Kala was delivering Peka’s baby and her husband was in the fields, and both Lana and the babe perished.

“Don’t let this take me,” Mara begs Kala, her eyes wild with fear and pain. The cramps are coming again, worse than ever, and she feels liquid between her legs.

“Never you fear, Mara. Every day women are delivering babies and living to watch them grow up. You won’t be any different.”

“But…but LanaAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

“Lana was unlucky.” Kala’s tone is firm, reassuring, just like her hands massaging Mara’s belly. “You have me. I’ll take care of you.” She glances toward the windows, which she’s lined with sage and garlic. Incense burns in censers at the windows and the door.

“But what…what if…” Another haunting wail from the direction of the chapel cuts into the room.

“Nothing evil can enter here.”

***~O~***

Rowan and Fenwik hold Zeke immobile at the front of the chapel, on his knees before the altar and the priest. The boy looks bedraggled, face dirty and clothes torn, barefoot.

“We are gathered here today to free this boy, Zeke, of the demonic influence that rests heavy upon his soul,” Father Bertram intones, his voice echoing off the stone walls and high ceilings of the chapel.

“Fiaer’shallah,” the gathered villagers respond as one.

“Let me go! I promise I’ll be good, just let me go!” Zeke cries. “I was just pretending! There is no demon!”

“May the Holy One come into this space, upon this hallowed ground,  and cast out the evil imprisoning this boy’s spirit,” Father Bertram prays.

“Fiaer’shallah.”

An unearthly scream tears from Zeke’s throat. His eyes are wide with terror, fixed upon a point over Father Bertram’s head.

“May Holy Light enter this place and dispel the darkness that holds Zeke captive.”

“Fiaer’shallah.”

“NO! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Zeke wails. He writhes and flails, trying to escape from the men restraining him, but their grip is like iron and his efforts are fruitless. His screeches turn incoherent and his body wrenches and twists as if something horrible within him is trying to get out.

The villagers look on with horror, even as they lend Father Bertram their voices to cast evil out of the boy.

“Someone stop this! He’s just a boy!” a woman somewhere in the chapel pleads, but those near her hush her, telling her that this must be done, it’s the only way.

Unperturbed, Father Bertram continues his prayer, reciting the words of the Holy One known to be effective in casting out evil influences. The Holy Words never fail. He must only believe and persist, and the demon will release its hold on the boy and leave Kervan forever.

With a burst of monstrous strength and an inhuman shriek, Zeke tears himself free from his captors and runs straight into Father Bertram’s outstretched palm.

“IN THE NAME OF THE HOLY ONE, BEGONE, DEMON!” Father Bertram commands. His dark eyes blaze fiery intensity. Zeke stops in his tracks, still as stone. His eyes roll back in his head and he drops to the floor, completely unresponsive.

“MAY THE HOLY ONE BE PRAISED!” the villagers exult.

***~O~***

“Another push or two. I can see the baby’s head,” Kala instructs Mara. “You’re almost there.”

Mara screams, in too much pain to form words. But a moment later, a baby slides from Mara’s body into Kala’s hands.

“Good job!” Kala gently wipes the baby with a cloth soaked in herb-infused water. “It’s a beautiful baby girl.” The baby cries, a full-throated protest of the trauma she and her mother have just endured.

Mara whimpers. Blood and afterbirth soak the towels on the bed beneath her. Kala deftly ties off the baby’s cord and places her on Mara’s chest.

“Now let’s just get you cleaned up. Focus on your baby, and I’ll handle the rest,” Kala tells Mara, surveying her charge with a critical eye. All of this looks normal, she decides. No reason Mara shouldn’t survive to care for her new baby daughter.

***~O~***

The chapel has fallen silent. All but a few of the candelabras have guttered out. Only the priest, Zeke, and Merrick remain; the other villagers have gone home.

“Will he be all right?” Merrick asks the priest, cradling his son’s limp body in his wiry arms.

“In time,” Father Bertram replies, wafting incense over the father and son.

Merrick nods, hoping the priest is right.

“He hit his head when he went down…”

“Which jarred the demon loose. I saw it rise, writhing, into the rafters. Your son is free.”

“May the Holy One be praised.”

***~O~***

Zeke’s eyes flutter open to see the shadowy, vaulted ceiling of the chapel. A pair of glowing red eyes stare down at him. He wants to scream, but he cannot move, and the sound stops and dies in his throat.

I WILL RETURN, a dark, raspy voice echoes in Zeke’s head. YOU WILL NEVER BE ALONE.