Sat, May 19 2012
It was fully dark by the time Father Robert and Phileas left the hamlet. The rain was coming down in icy sheets with an equally icy wind whipping about them. It was no night to be out on the roads but for the gravest of needs. Familiarity with the roads and an occasional lightening strike that confirmed their position brought the two men safely to Shillingworth Magna. They reached the manor house in less than an hour.
“Do you understand what you have asked of me and what will be happening?” The priest asked after they reached the shelter of the stables.
“What is to be accomplished, yes,” Phileas answered, “as to what is to be done to accomplish it, no.”
“I will have to enter the presence of the spirit or spirits that inhabit the house,” the priest explained. Then I will pray, calling on the name of God to cast them out. There will likely be a fight offered against that,” Father Robert warned. “There will be much turmoil in the physical and spiritual realms.”
He then turned to Phileas and looked him directly in the eyes as they dismounted their horses. “Are you a man of faith Phileas Fogg? Do you believe in the living God, Christ the son and the Holy Ghost? I don’t care about your being a Protestant in this instance. I just want to know for certain if you are a believer.”
Phileas had never been so directly questioned on his religious beliefs before. There was earnestness in the priest’s eyes that insisted on a direct answer with no qualifications. “I have declared myself a Christian before the church, yes,” Phileas answered directly. “That was done many years ago when I was a boy of fourteen. I don’t live it very well, but I am a believer.”
The priest nodded approval. “If you were not, you would be in great danger here,” he explained. “I would have had to send you away while I did my work. The possessing spirit will seek out a new host to attack once he is freed of your ancestor’s spirit. Any unbeliever in close proximity would be in great peril. Is there anyone in the house at present?”
“No,” Phileas answered. His last order before heading to the hamlet had been for McIvers to clear the house and grounds.
Father Robert then questioned Phileas on another related matter. “Do you also understand that only with life there is hope?” He looked away for a moment and set himself to differ with his church openly about a practice he had only disapproved of privately before. “In my faith, there is a belief that the prayers of the living can move an unbeliever into heaven. I don’t share that idea. It, I think, has been a practice created to comfort the living, but it has no basis that I can find in scripture. Your ancestor made his choices in life and became ensnared by the demonic. When the possessor is cast out the possessed will be cast out to his fate as well.”
Phileas nodded. “I understand.”
“I will be going with you into the house,” Fogg then announced. “I intend to oversee and be witness to this. You must understand… This is my home.”
The priest looked like he wanted to insist otherwise, but relented. “As you wish. Just stay back away from me and the spirits if they can be seen.”
Phileas nodded. “As I have been told, on this night, my ancestor is visible and will appear quite solid. I saw him for a split second last night. It was quite disconcerting.”
“It will be more so tonight,” the priest promised as he loosened the strap on his saddle bag. “I have done this twice. The first time was in releasing a living man from possession. The second was in clearing a small cottage of a destructive ghost. It is not work for the faint of heart.” He then pulled a small pouch from the saddlebag and then followed Phileas into the house.
The atmosphere was heavy within. It was not an imagining. Phileas had never felt such a depressing… No. It was not depression… It was anger. It was a suppressed rage that was looking for something to lash out at. He had felt that way a few times over his lifetime, but Fogg had never felt it to this degree. It would take a century to build up this kind of fury. The two men entered the house through the kitchens, lighting a lamp and carrying it with them. They were only past the study and halfway to the main staircase when the heaving fury in the house felt their presence and lashed out.
“Get out!” It shouted.
‘Of my own house?’ Phileas thought stubbornly. ‘Not bloody likely!’
Out of sheer perversity, Phileas lengthened his stride taking the stairs like a conquer. He led the priest to the back of the house were the spirit’s room was located. Just before he laid his hand on the doorknob, the spirit’s order was voiced again in a shout that shook the whole house.
“GET OUT!”
Phileas’ answer was to throw the door open wide.
Father Robert entered the room first. It was not as it should have been. There was an odd glow to the whole room that allowed the men entering to see the interior clearly without any need for their lamp. Shillingworth Magna sported wallpaper in most of its rooms. Fogg’s mother had chosen the various patterns when Fogg had been a very small boy. Phileas still remembered the smell of dust and glue as the workmen went through the whole house pulling down dry old paneling and replacing it with the wallpapers she had chosen. His nursery had been done in blue pin strips. The room he used now had small deep red diamonds with larger stylized diamonds at set varied points in the pattern. He wasn’t sure what pattern had been chosen for this room.
What Phileas saw as he walked in was the old dark wood paneling that had been there before the renovations. It appeared richer looking in this otherworldly glow, almost like new. The furnishings were altogether different from anything Phileas had ever seen in the house before. He was no expert on these things but he knew the heavily carved dark wood styling had to be from at least one to two hundred years in the past. A massive four-poster bed dominated the room. Its bed curtains were drawn back to show the figure lying tied to it.
Bartholomew Fogg had been about Phileas’ height and massively built when he had died. His arms and shoulders appeared to be twice what Phileas could boast. His hair was black. It appeared shoulder length, as was the fashion in his time. Presently, the very solid looking ghost’s hair was a dark mass, tossed and tangled. The eyes, half obscured by the long strands covering his face, were seen to be green, the trademark shade for the Foggs. And just as Nancy Fogg had written, they burned like green fire with hatred and loathing. Other than hair, height and eye color, the features on this man were similar enough to show kinship but not so similar that he and Phileas looked much alike.
The younger son was dressed in a nightshirt and was under blankets that were in terrible disarray. He appeared to have been struggling madly against his restraints. The bindings that held him to the four massive bedposts turned out to be leather straps rather than rags. They were wide and thick to keep the muscular large man firmly in place. The ghost was in a high state of hysteria. He was thrashing about, cursing and screaming his fury. There was now no wonder at all that his mother had thought him possessed.
Father Robert stopped Phileas as he started to approach the bed. He waved his hand back, indicating that Fogg stand to the side of the room near the door instead. “Don’t speak and don’t interfere,” he was warned. Phileas did as he was bid and watched.
The bell book and candle metaphor was not fully in evidence here as the priest went about his work. Father Robert laid his pouch on the nearby dresser and opened it keeping his full attention on the raving man in the bed. The equipment he pulled out consisted of a small bible and a small silver instrument that Fogg thought might be a vessel for holding holy water. The priest then moved closer to the bed with his bible and silver instrument in hand and started by praying in Latin.
The sound of prayers drove the ghost to further hysteria. Bartholomew lashed out at the priest with every vile name and curse Phileas had ever heard and some he had not. The very air in the room began to move with the raging of the creature. Objects flew across the room at both Fogg and the priest. Phileas’ shoulder was solidly struck with a large bound book.
‘There is going to be a serious bruise from that,’ Phileas thought as he backed against the wall watching more carefully for other missiles. The creature’s aim at the priest did not seem to be as good. The objects sent his direction hit the walls behind him, but nothing ever touched Father Robert.
Father Robert’s voice began to increase in volume drowning out the roaring of the now cyclone force winds that whirled about the room and the screams of the spirits. There were indeed two very distinct voices in evidence now. They continued to shout out their anger nearly in unison. Phileas had stopped listening to what they were saying. One could only deal with that sort of language for so long.
As the ghost seemed to be incapable of moving from the bed, Phileas concentrated more on what Father Robert was doing. Phileas understood the language but had not heard church Latin spoken often enough to keep up with what the priest was saying word for word. Even so, the Latin litany was clear in its intent. Father Robert was presently ordering the demon to separate for Bartholomew. He had moved closer to the bed now, within two steps of the specter. The object with the holy water, which had been held in his hand unused until now, was brought forward. Father Robert made a sign of the cross with it then shook it over the body of Bartholomew, sprinkling him liberally.
The ghost’s reaction was instantaneous. Bartholomew convulsed coming off the bed . . . literally. He levitated off the mattress screaming as if he had been sprinkled with fire. The ghost strained hard against the bindings but they held strong.
Then something Fogg would wish later that he had not witnessed happened. The slight glow of the ghost on the bed intensified to a fiery white light. Out of that light and out of Bartholomew’s chest came the most hideous thing he had ever seen. It was not a human form or that of an animal. It was a thing and it scared Fogg to death just looking at it. While Bartholomew’s ghost was repulsive in its constant barrage of curses, this thing was evil incarnate. Just looking at it was a trial in discipline not to turn away and run. Phileas’ earlier courage fled him as he seriously considered doing just that, but he also feared that his movements would distract the priest.
Father Robert was now shouting his liturgy in a powerful angry righteousness. The priest ordered the creature floating in mid air halfway between the restrained ghost and the ceiling to depart to hell as he continued to sprinkle holy water over the form on the bed. The creature savagely refused at first, but backed away screaming every time the water was shaken in its direction. It became larger like a cat puffing up to intimidate an attacker, but Father Robert was unimpressed. He continued to call on the name of God ordering the creature out of this world. Finally, the evil thing stopped howling its defiance long enough to make a coherent pronouncement in its defeat. “I will leave priest,” it spat, “but I leave with what’s mine!”
The creature then reached down toward the bed with long talon like claws and ripped the form of Bartholomew Fogg out of his bindings. Then together, the two spirits disappeared in an explosion of white light and fiery heat. Phileas turned away shielding his face from the blast. It felt as if the fires of hell were literally in the room, the heat was so intense. And ringing in his ears were three voices. One was that of Father Robert who was still shouting his liturgy. Another was the creature from hell growling. The last was the sound of Bartholomew Fogg, possessed in spirit no longer yet most firmly held in possession, being carried screaming to his fate.
A second later the sound of shouting, growling, screaming, the wind, the otherworldly glow, the old furnishings, the paneling, and the two condemned spirits were gone as if they had all been figments of Fogg’s imagination. Phileas experimentally opened his tightly closed eyes and then stood from his crouched down position against the wall near the door looking about in wonder. In the place of the furnishings from last century’s Shillingworth Magna, he found a cheerily decorated room with flowery wallpaper illuminated by the lamp he had placed on the floor; and next to a delicate Queen Anne bed of cherry wood stood Father Robert.
The priest was Fogg’s only assurance that what he had just gone through had indeed happened. He was smiling up at the ceiling with his hands clasp over the bible, quietly reciting prayers in Latin. He lifted up praises and blessed the room, the house and the family that lived in it.
Amen.
The End
Chapter 5 | Chapter 6