Alexandra Sokoloff - The Harrowing

It’s shock , she thought, We’re all going into shock .

Robin forced her mind back into consciousness, shouted, “ Lisa! You guys!”

Lisa looked at her, startled, focusing.

Cain jolted back to awareness, shot Robin an admiring look. “ Come on! ” He stepped behind Patrick’s chair, and the two girls joined him. They turned Patrick’s chair around to the north, and all three dipped their fingers into the bowl of blood. They all put one hand on Patrick’s shoulder and used their other hand to trace the pentagram in the air. Simultaneously, they shouted to the air, “ We open the portal of earth! ”

All three made the gesture of pulling curtains open.

Beneath them, the ground started to shake, rumbling as if in an earthquake.

Lisa gasped, stumbled. Robin fought for her own balance, grabbed Lisa’s arm to steady her. The Qlippah shrieked with laughter.

Cain shouted at them through the chaos, “Help me. Get him around.”

He grabbed the back of Patrick’s chair with his good arm. The girls leapt forward and the three of them strained to turn Patrick back to the table. The earth rolled and shook beneath them.

Cain pulled back and shouted, “Back to your points!” They all stumbled to their places on the pentagram and faced Martin, teetering for balance on the shaking floor. Cain picked up the bowl of blood and hurled the contents at Martin, splashing him with blood. The Qlippah screamed with rage.

Through the wind and rumbling, the three of them started to chant. “We banish you with fire. We banish you with air. We banish you with water. We banish you with earth.”

The Qlippah shouted over them. “You can’t get rid of me. I came from you , Robin. You called me and I came.”

Robin flinched, but she kept chanting with Lisa and Cain, eyes locked on Martin in the firelight.

“We banish you with fire. We banish you with air. We banish you with water. We banish you with earth.”

Martin’s gaze burned into Robin, the Qlippah shining through them, rippling on his face. “You can’t get rid of me, because I’m you . Your envy. Your fury. Your hatred.”

Robin faltered, looked into Martin’s bottomless eyes. The Qlippah smiled.

“You hated her. You wanted her dead. I made her dead. I am you .”

Robin cried out in anguish.

And at that hesitation, all three were suddenly blown backward by some immense force. Robin felt her breath knocked out of her. She was lifted and hurled; there was a crash and blinding pain.

The three of them slammed into the wall and slid to the floor.

Robin lay against the baseboard, bright lights swirling in her head, her skull throbbing from the blow. Beside her, Lisa was holding her arm, staring down at it. It dangled at a sickening angle.

Martin started to laugh wildly, the hideous insect voice of the Qlippah. The rapping raced through the ceiling. The walls bulged out sickeningly, like flesh; the ceiling cracked. White flakes were falling; Robin stared at the powdery dusting on her arm, mesmerized. It’s snowing , she thought in vague disbelief. The roof must have…split open ….

Cain pushed himself up to sitting and grabbed Robin’s arm, twisted her around to face him. “It’s not working,” he shouted over the chaos. “We have to bail.”

Outside, thunder boomed, shaking the building. The Hall groaned as if the entire structure was coming loose from its foundation. Something like rocks began to thud on the floor around them.

In a daze, Robin looked up and realized the ceiling was raining down in flakes and chunks around them.

Robin turned and stared across the pentagram at Martin, who was still tied to the chair. His bloody face was twisted with glee, the Qlippah rioting across his features. The spirit writhed inside his body, laughing at them through the chaos of elements. It shrieked at her. “I am you. I am you. I am you.”

Robin screamed out, “ No .”

Cain staggered to his feet and lunged for the fire ax on the floor. He jerked it up, drew back his arm to swing the blade at Martin’s head.

Robin leaped to her feet and seized Cain’s arm, fingernails digging into his flesh. “ No . Wait—”

Cain looked at her frenzied face and fell back. She advanced on the Qlippah, her voice raw.

“You lie . I have friends. I have love. I have life.”

Light .

Her mind flew through what she knew. The Qlippoth had broken because they could not hold the light. They couldn’t hold life.

Light.

Love.

Life.

She stared at the hideous thing in the chair. Martin was alive in there. If they could reach his being, fill him, love him…

She grabbed Cain’s hand. “The Qlippoth shattered because they couldn’t hold the light. They can’t bear light.” Cain looked back at her, questioning. Robin faced the Qlippah, braced herself against the wind ripping around them, and spoke aloud.

“Martin, I know you’re in there.”

The Qlippah cackled. “Martin’s dead! Cowboy’s dead! You’re all going to die!”

Robin took another step forward against the wind, forced herself to stare into the mad, demonic face. “I know you’re in there, Martin. Come back to us. We’re here for you…We’re here.”

Cain was suddenly beside her, looking at Martin’s face intently. “Come out, Martin. Come back.”

Robin spoke with him. “You’re not alone, Martin. You have us. We’re here. We love you. Come to us. Come back.”

Lisa pushed herself to her knees, wincing as she stood. She stepped beside Cain and Robin, holding her useless arm, and called against the wind.

“Please come back, Martin….”

Without realizing, without meaning to, the three of them spoke it at once.

“ Martin .”

And for a fleeting second, Martin’s own face flickered through the mad visage of the Qlippah. His eyes, desperately unhappy, stared up into theirs.

Robin jolted, then called to him urgently. “Martin. It’s in your body, Martin. It’s your body. Send it out.”

Cain took up the call, overlapping her, “Send it out, Martin.”

Lisa’s eyes blazed and she ground out, “Send it the fuck out.”

All three of them shouted, “ Send it out! ”

The Hall shook to its foundations. In the chair in front of them, Martin spasmed, choking, flesh and mind rebelling against the cruel invasive spirit. And then Martin’s features emerged from the horrible slack formlessness of the Qlippah’s face. His own eyes met Robin’s in desperate appeal, and unfathomable courage, and Martin gasped out in his own voice, “Leave…me….”

A terrible struggle raged in the flesh of Martin’s face…human features racked with a rippling evil, nerves and muscles contorting with the battle.

A whoosh of energy rose from Martin’s body, invisible but palpable. Robin froze, overwhelmed with the sheer force of it. She saw Cain and Lisa staring upward, paralyzed. The energy ripped through the air and cycloned around the room, gusting through the flames in the hearth, shaking the windows, blowing the curtains into a frenzy, overturning everything in its path.

Robin held tightly to Cain. He grabbed Lisa and they clung to one another as furniture rattled and jumped around them. Above them, the ceiling beams groaned.

Lisa was screaming. Robin couldn’t tell if she was, too.

The energy spiraled, raging around the room. The couch flipped over, and books exploded out of the shelves, pages flying. The mirror shattered above the hearth, raining glass.

In the midst of the tumult, Robin heard a small, frightened voice.

“What’s happening?”