Alexandra Sokoloff - The Harrowing

Robin tried to focus entirely on the rope in her hands. With Patrick lying dead two floors above them, any kind of thought was unbearable.

Cain finished the last line of the pentagram and stood up, brushing chalk from his jeans.

Robin bent over Martin to tie another knot—Lisa suddenly cried out behind her, “ Robin! ”

Robin glanced down. Martin’s eyes were open beneath her. She gasped and pulled back, her heart pounding madly.

Martin looked up at her, his eyes hurt, dazed. The side of his face was bruised, pulpy from the blow of the bat. He muttered weakly, “Robin? What’s…happening?”

The others gathered warily, Cain brandishing the bat Martin looked around at them all shakily. “I was in the attic. You left. Then…what? I don’t…remember.”

He gasped, seeing his own blood-soaked shirt. “Oh my God. Robin…” He looked up at her, trembling, terrified.

Robin hesitated. “Martin?” She stepped carefully forward. Cain said sharply, “No—”

Robin leaned in toward Martin and slapped him hard across the face.

Martin’s eyes popped open wide, flaming black. Quick as a snake, he lunged up at Robin’s throat, mouth wide, teeth bared, cords straining in his neck.

Robin jumped away just as Martin’s teeth closed on air with a sickening crunch. Lisa jolted back, freaked.

The Qlippah writhed in Martin’s body, sliding in the chair, hissing and spitting. “You dare? YOU DARE? Let me go .“ All pretense of humanity was gone. It strained at the rope, chest bulging, eyes popping, bellowing like a bull.

Cain raised the bat high, ready to strike. Martin bucked, the ropes scraping at his skin, opening flesh. But the Qlippah seemed to be contained by Martin’s physical form—the smallish body unable to break free of the layers of rope.

The table began to shake, rattling on its legs. Lisa and Robin froze in disbelief.

Cain shouted, “You’re going all right. Back to the Abyss.”

The table stopped. The Martin-thing grinned up at him, a chilling sight. “No precedent, counselor. You’ve lost your fifth. The star is broken.”

Cain’s face hardened. He turned, shot Robin a look through the flickering yellow light.

Robin nodded, took Lisa’s hand, pulled her toward the doorway. “Come on.”

As they passed Cain, she whispered to him, “Be careful.” Their eyes met and he brushed her fingers with his before turning back to the thing that had been Martin.

Robin pulled Lisa out through the arched door, into the hollow darkness of the main hall.

Lisa was sobbing through clenched teeth as she and Robin climbed the shadowy main stairs. “I can’t stand it. I can’t.”

Robin stared upward into the dark. “Just a little bit more,” she said, hoping her voice was steady.

On the second floor, Robin and Lisa stepped into the blue light of the laundry room.

Patrick’s body lay on the floor in a pool of blood, his eyes wide and staring.

Lisa crumpled into sobs again. Robin’s eyes filled with tears, her heart twisting in her chest.

They both knelt beside him on the warped linoleum. Lisa cradled the blond head in her lap. She passed her hands tenderly over his eyelids, shutting his eyes, then stroked his face and hair.

Robin held his hand in hers and thought fiercely, You saved us. I’ll never forget what you did I’ll never forget you. Never. You ‘re part of me forever .

They were both silent for a time, holding him. Lisa seemed almost calm, dreamily stroking his hair. Then Robin met Lisa’s eyes.

“He would want us to, you know.”

Lisa nodded. Robin looked down on Patrick’s body, swallowed through the ache in her throat. “We need you, cowboy.”

In the long, shadowed space of the lounge, Cain gritted his teeth against the throbbing in his shoulder and bent to light candles at each of the five points of the chalk pentagram on the floor.

The Qlippah watched from Martin’s body, its head lolling grotesquely against the chair back. “Don’t forget the fairy dust,” it gibbered. “You have to sprinkle it on me and knock your heels together three times.”

Cain stood, fought a wave of dizziness at the pain. He breathed in shallowly, slid his left hand into the front pocket of his jeans for his lighter, stepped to the fireplace to light the candles on the mantel.

The Qlippah watched greedily with Martin’s eyes. “You know you don’t believe this bullshit. Can’t do kike rituals if you don’t believe. Better men have tried.”

Cain ignored the leering thing. He stooped to one of the duffels, pulled out the printout of the ritual they’d lifted off the Web. The title at the top read, “The Greater Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.”

The Qlippah looked straight into the fire. The flames suddenly leapt up, blazing, showering sparks into the room. Cain jumped back from the burning pinpoints.

The Qlippah smiled loftily with Martin’s mouth. “Are you a priest now? A rabbi? You, who believe in nothing! Son of a syphilitic whore, and not just in a manner of speaking…”

Cain stiffened, his hands clenching.

A smile twisted across Martin’s face. The Qlippah’s voice became cunning, crafty. “Want to know who your father is?” it crooned. “I can tell you. It’s not pretty, but at long last you would know.”

Cain turned on it. “Shut up,” he whispered. In his hand was a switchblade. He snicked it open. The blade gleamed silver in the firelight.

Martin’s face rippled and dimpled, as if snakes were moving under the skin. The Qlippah’s whisper was sibilant, inhuman. “You’ll fail. You’ll fail because you come from dirt. You come from scum. You are not worthy .”

Cain’s face was drained of color. The hand holding the knife dropped to his side.

Something thudded on the main stairway.

Cain came back to himself, spun toward the sound, brandishing the knife.

There was another thud, another, and then a soft dragging, coming toward the doorway of the lounge.

Robin and Lisa appeared in the doorway, pulling Patrick’s body between them on the polished floor, panting at the strain of the dead weight.

For a moment, an animal rage played across Martin’s face, then the Qlippah bared its teeth in a hideous grin.

“Ah. Company. Daddy’s best boy.”

Cain stepped forward to help the girls drag Patrick’s body to the table. The three of them stooped and, straining, lifted the corpse into a chair Cain had placed on one of the points of the chalk pentagram, across from Martin’s splayed form.

The corpse slumped heavily in the chair. Lisa wrapped her arms around Patrick’s torso and held him up from behind. Robin wound rope around him, tying him up into a sitting position, trying not to think too hard about what she was doing. She glanced at Lisa, saw her face was deathly pale but determined.

Across from them, the Qlippah squirmed and jeered in Martin’s body, the ropes chafing flesh. “Clever children. Extraordinary children. But doesn’t it say in your little do-it-yourself manual? It doesn’t count if he’s D E A D ! ”

The Qlippah bellowed the last word, an earsplitting shout. All the windows rattled, as if some huge force were shaking the Hall.

Robin recoiled. Beside her, Lisa sucked in her breath, eyes wide with terror. The rattling continued all around them, deafening.

Then it abruptly stopped. Nothing but the sound of their own tortured breathing.

The Qlippah grinned around at them ferally, tongue lolling from Martin’s mouth. “It doesn’t count if he’s dead,” it crooned again.

Cain stared down at it grimly. “It doesn’t say that. It says we all need to be here.” He looked at Robin and Lisa, flanking Patrick’s lifeless body. “We’re all here.”