Page 33 of Play Nice

I think of the version of the book with Mom’s commentary, her notes to me, and in that version she probably clarified whether Roy said these words or if she embellished, and if she embellished, why?

There were answers in that book. Not all of them but some.

More than I have now. More than I will ever get.

Now I’m angry at Dad all over again.

This is the second time he’s separated me from her. The second time he’s driven someone close to him into a house possessed, into cohabitation with a demon.

I listen for the demon, but it’s been quiet. Politely allowing me to read. I vacillate between fear and affection for it. For the book in my hands. For everything. My life.

Ruth gathered the girls and escorted them outside onto the deck, set them up with various activities—sketchpads and colored pencils, brand-new board games, a deck of cards, a stack of paperback books.

She’d bought them a barrel of animal crackers and glass bottles of cream soda. I was so grateful, I started to cry.

Once the tears began to fall, they didn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop.

As if my body knew of the horrors to come.

-17-

The Exorcism

Father Bernard brought in silver crucifixes and began to place them around the house.

Ruth sprinkled baby powder on the carpet downstairs and a line of salt at the top of the stairs in the living room, promising she’d clean up after.

She hung a bell on the door to Cici’s room and another on the door to the closet. Then she closed both doors.

Jed had a lot of equipment, including cameras.

“Don’t worry,” he assured me, “the footage is only for us.”

We gathered at the dining table. I watched the girls through the sliding glass doors. Elle had picked up a paperback. Dee played solitaire. Cici drew—another picture of the house, her new favorite subject.

“All right,” Roy said. “The demon is aware of our presence. However, it operates on its own time. It will decide when to make itself known to us. While we wait, I’d like to establish some ground rules.

Do not engage. Ruth, Jed, Alexandra, do not speak to it.

Do not acknowledge it. Do not listen to it.

Do not look at it. We don’t know how powerful it is yet. If it’s violent.”

I thought about what I’d said to Helen, how I’d told her that I didn’t think the demon wanted to hurt me. That what it really wanted was for me to hurt myself.

I wondered, sitting there at the table, silent tears streaming down my face, if that was true.

Any illusions I’d had of safety were suddenly gone.

“We shouldn’t underestimate it,” Roy said, “but it hasn’t shown itself to be aggressive thus far. Whatever happens, I’m here to walk you through it. Don’t hesitate to speak to me or ask me questions. Let’s join hands. And let’s begin. Close your eyes.”

I reached out for Roy. For Ruth.

Father Bernard began to pray.

“Lord heavenly Father…”

Roy held a rosary and muttered under his breath in Latin. “ Ecce crucis signum, fugiant phantasmata cuncta. Rogamus te ut hunc locum in pace relinquas. Apage! Apage! ”

This went on for what felt like hours. Until we were interrupted by the sliding door opening, to Cici stepping inside.

“Cici. No. Back out,” I said.

“It’s hot out there,” she said.

“Cici,” I repeated, my tone sharp.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m in here or out there. It won’t change what happens.”

I looked to Roy, to Father Bernard.

Father Bernard took a deep breath, opened his mouth to speak.

He was interrupted by the chime of a bell.

The sound echoed throughout the house.

I turned back to Cici, who raised her eyebrows at me as if to say, Told you so.

“Cici,” Roy said, giving up his chair. “Will you join us at the table.”

“Whatever,” she said, climbing onto the chair and smacking her sketchpad down on the glass. In her picture of the house, all the windows were blacked out.

The bell rang again.

Roy continued to mutter in Latin. Father Bernard continued to pray, his voice now booming.

Jed fiddled with his equipment.

And Ruth…Ruth started to sweat.

She was pale, pale like Cici had been earlier that day. Sickly looking.

“Ruth,” I said, reaching out for her. We’d been holding hands. I couldn’t remember when I’d let go. “Ruth, are you okay?”

She grunted. Retched, like she was about to vomit.

Cici didn’t flinch. She was busy eyeing Roy.

“Ruth!” I said, standing.

“Okay there, Ruthie?” Jed asked, without taking off his massive earmuff headphones. A rhetorical question.

No one else seemed worried about her. But I had a feeling in my gut. A writhing dread.

I regretted ever calling them. Ever seeking help. I’d doomed them.

The thought was so clear.

I’ve doomed them.

Bells. The sound now incessant. Somehow louder than Father Bernard, than Roy.

Ruth shook. Her eyes rolled over white. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…”

“Ruth!”

“She’s fine. Leave it alone,” Roy instructed me. “Close your eyes. Pray. Cici, what does it want?”

“Don’t speak to her!” I snapped at him, panicked, completely terrified.

“ Come out, come out, wherever you are… ” Cici sang, finishing with a grim little laugh.

“Cici,” Roy said.

“Stop!” I shouted at him. “Stop this! Stop all of this. This is ridiculous. Ruth needs help.”

Ruth’s head whipped from side to side, side to side, side to side. Gibberish poured from her lips. I worried she was having a seizure.

“This is normal,” Roy said, calmly. “Ruth.”

She came back to herself immediately.

I remembered the couple from Maine. The woman walking toward me, her tongue out. It was acting. It was all acting.

“I don’t think this was a good idea,” I said, doubting every decision I’d ever made in my life that brought me to that moment. I collapsed onto the floor in sobs, holding my knees to my chest. “What have I done?”

They all ignored me. Roy carried on in Latin, Father Bernard with his prayers. Jed with his equipment, Ruth with her head jerking in every direction. Even Cici with her drawing.

Even the demon. Ringing the bells.

My sobs turned to screams. I couldn’t stand it.

I unleashed the words I’d been holding in for who knows how long. “Get out of my house! Leave me be! Leave me alone! Get the fuck out of my house!” I pounded my fists on the floor, on my chest. I pulled out my own hair.

Still no one looked at me. No one acknowledged me.

I crawled toward the stairs, feeling the grainy salt in the thick carpet. A mess.

“Alex,” Roy said. Urgent. “Alex, come back!”

There was a distinct line of salt on the top step. My wrist slid right through it.

“Alex!”

The front door swung open. And shut. Open and shut.

The laughter came. The demonic laughter.

I didn’t fall down the stairs. I was pulled.

I was being dragged out of my own house.

MY HOUSE SKIN MINE

Or so I thought. Until I hit the landing and the door slammed shut. My head collided with the brick floor, and the world went black. And just as I came to, I saw it. Eyes watching me from the dark of the downstairs hall. Pale and cloudy with vertical red slits for pupils.

By the time everything came back into focus, it was gone.

The ringing in my ears wasn’t the bells. The bells were quiet.

Everything was quiet.

Except for the laughing.

And then Jed.

There are no words to describe the sounds he made. Sounds of absolute anguish. The chaos emanating from the worst pain imaginable. Sounds of hopelessness. Of the kind of harm that can never be undone.

As I ascended each step, my vision blurring, my body aching, I knew whatever waited for me at the top of the stairs wasn’t as terrible as the thing lurking at the bottom.

My eyes found my daughters, the three of them standing out on the deck, the sliding glass doors wide open. Elle looked at me, her expression full of contempt rather than fear, and she pulled the door shut. She’d never open it again, not for me.

That’s when I turned to Jed and saw what was happening to him. He was struggling to remove his headphones. Whenever he pulled them away from his ears, they would snap back onto his head, like magnets. Or maybe his fingers were slipping because of all the blood. It was pouring out of his ears.

Father Bernard stood rigid, clutching his Bible to his chest.

Ruth opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish. She was facing forward, but her gaze was all over the place, her eyes rolling around inside her head.

Roy crossed himself repeatedly.

Something compelled me to do the same.

Then I made toward Jed, readying myself to help him. But he’d done it. He’d finally gotten the headphones off.

His ears were charred and blistered, spewing crimson everywhere. His blond hair was soaked with blood.

He took a wobbling step back and then fell to the floor with a thud.

Elle and Dee screamed so loud, I thought they’d shatter the glass.

Cici, unaffected, gave me that same smug look she had when she first came in. The raised eyebrows. Told you so.

“I’m calling nine-one-one,” I said, heading toward the kitchen for the phone.

Roy caught me by the arm. “Wait. This is what it wants.”

“He’s hurt!” I tasted blood in the air. I smelled sulfur. “This is a disaster.”

“It’s disrupting,” he said.

I pulled free of Roy’s grip. “Disrupting what?”

“It won’t go,” Ruth said, her voice raspy. Not her own.

“Don’t let it in, Ruth,” Roy said. “Don’t listen to it!”

“Too…” Her eyes rolled to the front. She looked at us. Looked at me. “Too late.”

Her head flew forward, bashing into the table. There was no time to react before it happened again. And again. And again.

Father Bernard held out his Bible, a crucifix. “In the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, be gone! Leave us! You have no power here!”

Again. Again. I heard a crack that I thought was the table, but it wasn’t. It was Ruth’s nose. Her teeth. Her pretty face now gore, a Halloween mask.

“In the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ—”

“I don’t want to see it anymore!” Ruth cried. Her hands shot to her face. Fingers climbing up her cheeks. Nails digging into her eyes. She was clawing out her eyes right in front of us. The violence of it was quick. The noise was terrible. Ripping. Wet.

I grabbed her forearms, and she struggled against me. She was strong.

“Help me!” I called to Roy.

He finally relented, coming to my aid. We pinned Ruth down on the floor. Roy held her while I called 911.

They sent two ambulances that arrived, mercifully, within five minutes.

Still, it was the longest five minutes of my life. Ruth and Jed bleeding on the salty carpet, their bodies eerily still, breath shallow.

Father Bernard continued to pray but without his former gusto.

We were defeated. Handily.

My daughters cried outside on the deck. Hugged each other.

At least, Elle and Dee cried. Cici allowed them to embrace her, but she didn’t turn away from the violent scene. Didn’t cry. She showed no emotion.

Father Bernard went to the hospital with Jed and Ruth. Roy refused to leave me and the girls alone in the house.

He cleaned blood and salt from the carpets. He escorted me downstairs to show me the hoofprints in the baby powder, more proof I didn’t need.

Elle and Dee locked themselves in their bedroom. They refused to see me, and I didn’t press.

Cici sat on the couch with her sketchpad and the big barrel of animal crackers.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Yeah. Are you?”

I would later find out that I had a concussion and two bruised ribs from my fall. “No. I don’t think I am.”

“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

“What?” I asked.

She repeated herself, speaking slowly this time, enunciating each word. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

“Where did you…who…”

“I don’t remember where I heard it,” she said, shrugging. “But I thought about it today. I’m sorry you’re sad. But you should have left it alone.”

“Cici. What’s going on with you?” I asked. I hadn’t yet exhausted my tears. “Why are you speaking to me like this? Why did you say that thing earlier. About me…me dying in the house.”

She looked up at me. “It’s okay, Mom. I’m going to die here, too.”

—

My phone rings. It’s Helen.

“She made it up,” I say. “The book is fucking bullshit.”

“I’m doing well, thanks for asking,” she says.

“That whole exorcism, that’s not how it happened. We were outside for all of it. I didn’t come in because I couldn’t come in. She locked us out there. For hours. There were no ambulances. No one was bleeding out of their ears or clawing out their eyes. That didn’t happen.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Clio.”

“Why would she write this? Why would she lie?”

I hear her breathing. I hear her smoking. I don’t hear an answer.

I try another question. “How did she die?”

She sighs. “If I were the sentimental type, I’d say she died of a broken heart. But technically, she had a heart attack. Years of drinking. High blood pressure. Stress. She’d get sober and then—”

“Let me stop you there, because if she loved and missed us so fucking much, if she was so brokenhearted, she would have gotten sober. Stayed sober.”

“It’s not that simple, Clio. It’s not that easy.”

“She could have reached out. She could have apologized.”

“She was ashamed. She thought you’d be better off without her. Your father convinced her of that.”

“Yeah, see, this is why I can’t talk to you. It’s not all his fault. Everyone’s so quick to point fingers and blame someone else. Dad blames Mom. You blame Dad. Mom blamed the demon. Why can’t anyone just give me the truth?”

“Clio, I asked you. I told you I didn’t want to damage your relationships or cause chaos. You said it wasn’t my call.”

“Why was she here? When she died, why was she here at Edgewood? And don’t tell me it’s because she wanted to feel close to us.”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Roy.”

“Okay, yeah. For sure. I trust the demonologist will have some honest answers for me. I’m sure he’s a real straight shooter. Where was Roy when she was here dying?”

“What do you want, Clio? I don’t think it’s the truth.

I think it’s a version of the truth you can live with.

A version of it you can sell yourself. You’re curious, you’re open, but up until the point it’s ugly.

I’m sorry that you’re struggling. I’m sorry that I can’t give you whatever it is you seek.

You’re asking me why Alex was at the house. Why are you at the house?”

The lights flicker, and in the brief but total darkness there’s hot breath on the back of my neck. An ugly truth.

“I’m sorry, too,” I say.

I hang up, pull my knees to my chest, close my eyes and wait for morning.