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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

PERCY’S SECRET WEAPON

P ercy’s shoulder smashed against the doorframe in his haste to return to Joe. A black bruise began to form under his skin on impact, but he held his precious cargo safe in the palm of his hand, stumbling forward in a dizzy tumult of queasiness, only to shove an orange fist-full of fur in Joe’s face. “Are you terrified?”

Whiskers tickled Joe’s nose as both he and the stray kitten attempted to pull back from the close contact that was foisted upon them. “No. Should I be?”

“Not a Pontianak, then… I didn’t think so.” Percy let his arm drop, kitten still spilling over either side of his palm, tail swishing with annoyance. “Worth a try.” He plopped the kitten onto the bed, kicked the dripping corpse out of his chair, and took his place once again. He focused on Joe’s eyes, clear and deep, and using every ounce of energy in his ailing body, commenced, “Exorcizamus hanc bestiam in Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti…”

“You’re going to exorcise me?” Joe’s quizzical smile deepened.

“Quaesumus, Sancte, corpus hoc ab insidiis diaboli defende. Protege adversus spiritus nequitiam et tyrannidem diaboli…”

“But you know I’m not a demon.”

“Vade Satana, infernales invasores, putrescentiae mentis et omnes legiones diabolicae. His verbis Satanam sub pedibus nostris opprimimus, ligamus et proicimus in foveam profundam…”

“And you should know, your boyfriend doesn’t like being exorcised. It doesn’t bother me, though.”

“Expellimus te a nobis immundum spiritum! Pessima bestia, te ad Infernus projicio.”

On completion of the incantation, Joe’s inhabitant’s reaction was exactly as Percy had expected it would be, which was no reaction at all. Nevertheless, it ratcheted Percy’s anger up a notch, and with no other plan in mind, he repeated the words with twice the vehemence, and exactly the same result.

All the while the kitten pawed its way over the mattress, toying with a coil of copper wire, smacking the razor blade box to see what it could get out, then, once it caught the scent, scratching at the plastic bag of meat and blood.

Percy made an absentminded sojourn to the foot of the bed, repeating the incantation he knew by heart, untying the bag, unwrapping the lamb, and pulling out a chunk of bloody meat for the kitten. It was snatched from his fingers greedily, sharp little teeth tearing it apart, the white scruff of fur on the cat’s chin turning pink.

Percy took the greater part of the package back to his chair and held it before Joe. “Is he hungry?”

“I’m not going to let him eat.”

The sound of the meat smacking into the wall made the kitten jump before it realised what had happened, then it fell on its unexpected feast with bestial fervour.

“I’ll have you out soon,” Percy said, to both himself and the thing. “As soon as they get back.”

“You’re going to torture him again?” the beast goaded. “Will you bring him a puppy next?”

It was Joe’s sense of humour all over, and Percy winced. He wondered how Joe was coping inside his body. What it was like sharing with this creature.

His own possession, the one time it had happened, was horrifying. The things it had made him do were forever on display in a gallery of his worst nightmares, but it was the feeling—the exposure—that he still reviled. He couldn’t hide from it. It was in him and it was him. It knew his thoughts, his memories, his emotions as well as if they were its own.

Joe, Percy knew, hadn’t told him a thousand things. He’d lied about where he came from. He refused to say how he ended up with the Church. He never shared anything about his family, and if he’d truly murdered his father, Percy could understand that, because he’d murder his own father in a heartbeat if the opportunity presented itself. None of that bothered Percy in the least. What he really hated was the way, earlier, the thing had so flippantly hurled Joe’s secret horror into the open. Not only for Percy to hear, but for Joe to see and relive. And now its brief foray into humour was another brutal reminder that it was still sifting, searching, flaying. Working its way through Joe. And Percy knew enough to know that whatever it might pull out next could be far worse for Joe.

So Percy said, “I was five years old the first time I met a demon. I was at my father’s house with my older brother, Michael. My father had taken up with a new woman, a witch, literally, and since then he’d had very little time for me. Nor had my mother, having been left to raise two boys without his help. My brother though… He was ten, and he had all the time in the world for me.”

Percy stretched his legs out onto the mattress, crossing them at the ankle. “You wouldn’t think a child of that age would remember so well, but… I worshipped him. I loved him as much as I feared my father. Because every time my father raised a hand to me, Michael stepped in front of it. He meant the world to me.”

Joe’s eyes narrowed on Percy’s relaxing frame. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m not,” replied Percy. Yet he continued, “One night, I was in the playroom with Michael, and with our nanny. She was only nineteen, just an underpaid teenager trying to get some savings together.” Percy felt a gentle tug at the base of his trousers, the tentative touch of the kitten’s paws trying him out. He kept still. “I don’t even remember what we were doing, but what I do remember is the way Michael, very suddenly, wasn’t Michael anymore. It was before he’d even said a word, before his expression changed. There was an absence of him. It’s like that feeling when you find a dead animal on the side of the road. And you know it’s dead, even though it seems like it’s only sleeping. It looks just the same, but there’s something imperceptibly different. It was like that. Michael was simply gone from me and my life. And so subtly. So suddenly.”

The kitten made its way across the bridge of Percy’s legs, digging its claws in here and there for stability, making tiny pinpricks in the expensive wool. “When his expression did change, I was terrified. I knew the thing meant to hurt me. I remember I burst into tears and scrambled away from him. Our nanny, Estella, had no idea what was going on. She tried to calm me down, but I couldn’t tell her what was wrong. I didn’t know. I just wanted her to take me away from him.”

The kitten’s soft purr punctured the cold air, its claws pulling in and out of the fabric on Percy’s thighs as it softened him. “Demons are strong. Even in a thin little boy’s body, they’re strong.” He settled the kitten with the stroke of one hand, just as large as the feline was, encouraging her into a little ball, where she set about cleaning herself. “He dragged Estella across the room, quite deliberately, in hindsight, in front of the closed door. And he murdered her there. He did it slowly. And when he was done… she was barely recognisable as a human being, let alone as the young woman she had once been. Her screams…” Percy’s brow contracted over closed eyes, and he lifted a finger a small way into the air. “I can hear it. I hear it when I’m sleeping. I see her still. And what makes me shudder even to this day is the way my father and my stepmother had to force what was left of her body out of the way to open the door. The dull thud of her skin, the squelch of her organs, the sound of them stepping in the puddle of her congealing blood.”

The kitten raised its nose up to Percy’s thumb, and he ran it over her forehead. “I believe it spared me because it knew that would be worse for me than dying would have been. I’ve never told a soul this, but when it was done, it stood there, in my brother’s body, and it watched me. It watched me and it waited for them to come. Maybe it planned to kill them in front of me, too. Finish me off last. But I don’t think so. I think it just enjoyed my sheer terror.”

The kitten swatted at Percy’s index finger. He let her take it between her teeth and chew on it playfully, his other hand stroking her scrawny back. “They got it out of the room, eventually. I don’t think the demon could have known what a powerful witch my stepmother was. But they got it out, and there I was, alone with Estella. What was left of her. It took me so long to work up the courage to step over her. To push her out of the way. Because she was still very real to me. Like Michael had been. And all of it was gone, and they left me there. And then…” Percy breathed out a sigh, his eyes moving to his cigarettes, over on the bed, out of reach. He let the kitten nuzzle her face into his palm instead. “And then they told me the whole thing never happened. Well, my stepmother did. Any mention of it got a backhand across the face from my father. One word. But she, to her credit, sat me down and talked me through the lie. She said that I’d dreamed it. That my brother had gone walking off the property never to be seen again, and I’d made up the story to explain it to myself. A sick daydream. She stuck to that lie for decades.”

Percy laughed a hollow sort of laugh. “Well, you know how that story ends, handsome. We found him and we exorcised him, and I began to fall in love with you as we did it. But you never knew the first half. I never told you how badly my mother fell apart, but it’s exactly as you would expect. I never explained to you how she forgot to feed me. Couldn’t do the washing or find clothes for me. How she could barely even look at me after that. She simply broke down. I was five, and I did my best, and so did she, but it was never enough… I couldn’t tell her the truth, of course, because what would that have done to her? The damage was already more than enough. I felt so hopeless and alone all those years. And I never told you that…”

He wet his lips, staring out the broken window at the black and mossy brick wall, the purr vibrating up through his hand, the one and only touch of comfort in that isolated, miserable room. “I’m sorry if I’m a little brusque at times. There are things I worry about that I don’t want to trouble you with. But what I’ve always worried about the most is that if I lose control again, if I drop that ball one more time, I’ll find myself right back there in that room. At the mercy of something like that demon. And so I’ve tried to make myself… I’ve tried to be strong…”

The kitten had fallen into a cozy slumber, curled up in Percy’s hand. Percy sat still, chewing on a thumbnail, while the sound of a door thumping into gore reverberated throughout his mind and down his spine. Joe’s body sat just as quietly as Percy’s, captivated successfully by the horrors of Percy’s past.

The thing took a breath, and Percy intercepted with, “And did I ever tell you what I did to that older boy who took advantage of me at boarding school? Prepare to be horrified, darling…”

Percy talked on and on, swimming through his malignant sickness, which he felt crushing him on all sides, growing worse and worse, his own world growing darker and darker, borne on only by the faint flicker of hope that Joe would be waiting for him on the other side. That he would understand, and that he would forgive Percy, because those words and that horror were all the power he had to keep the thing safely away from Joe’s hidden scars, whatever they might be.